
Glass V3 Z 3Ô / 
Book j Zf L3 

By bequest of 

William Lukens Shoemaker 




üjywsm<i:-- 



BALLADS AND SONGS 
OF BEITTANY 



By TOM TAYLOE 



TRANSLATED FROM THE " BARSAZ-BREIZ " OF VICOMTE HERSART 
DE LA VILLEMARQUE 

WITH SOME OF THE ORIGINAL MELODIES HARMONIZED BY 
MRS. TOM TAYLOR 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. TISSOT, J. E. MILLAIS, R.A., J. TENNIEL, 
C, KEENE, E. CORBOÜLD, AND H. K. BROWNE 




3Toubmt <mb Cnmbribge 
MACMILLAN AND CO. 

1865. 



^ ; ^ 



out, 

W. L. Skoemafe©* 
7 S *06 






LONDON : 
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTED, WHITEFRIARS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The Brittany which still retains so much of its ancient 
tongue, national character, and local usages, as to separate its 
population from that of the rest of France even more distinctly 
than the Welsh or the Highlanders are separated from the 
English, comprehends the three departments of Finistère, 
Morbihan, and the Cotes du Nord. These departments include 
the four ancient bishoprics of St. Pol de Leon, or the Leonnais, 
Cornouaille, Yannes, and Tréguier, each of which was formerly, 
and is still in great measure, a district with distinct dress, 
usages, and local character, both in the landscape and the 
people. 

The Léonais (the Lemovicas of the Merovingian sovereigns) 
forms the extreme western horn of Brittany, and includes 
almost all the arrondissements of Morlaix and Brest. It is 
the richest and most varied region of Finistère. Its fields are 
fertile : its population (setting Brest aside as a French Ports- 
mouth, only Breton in name), scattered in small villages or 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

isolated farms, live a life of extreme simplicity, which still 
retains most of the characteristics of an age of faith. The 
church is the great point of reunion for the Leonards, its "par- 
dons," or festivals of patron saints, furnish its great occasions of 
rejoicing; the "Day of the Dead" — the day after All Saints' 
Day — is its chief family commemoration. The whole population 
is in mourning : the day is spent in religious services, in masses 
and prayers for the dead. The remains of the supper, which 
crowns the offices of the day, is left on the table, that the dead 
may take their seats again round the remembered board. The 
festival of St. John — the Christian substitute for the Druidic 
Sun-feast — is still celebrated. Beal-fires blaze on every hill- 
side, round which the peasants dance all night, in their holiday 
clothes, to the sound of the biniou — a kind of rustic hautboy — 
and the shepherd's horn, or of a rude music drawn out of reeds 
fixed across a copper basin. The girl who dances round nine 
St. John's fires before midnight is sure to marry within the 
year. In many parishes the cure himself goes in procession 
with banner and cross to light the sacred fire. A brand from 
it is preserved with reverence : placed between a branch of box 
blessed on Palm Sunday, and a piece of the Twelfth-night cake, 
it is supposed to preserve the cottage from evil by thunder. 
The flowers of the nosegay which crowns the beal-fire heap are 



INTRODUCTION. Vli 

powerful talismans against bodily ills. Intensity of religious 
faith, passing into the wildest, and often grossest superstition, 
is the dominant character of the inhabitant of the Léonais. 
He is grave, intense in his feelings, though reserved in the 
expression of them, distrustful of strangers, and profoundly 
attached to his own country, its beliefs and usages. His 
dialect is long-drawn and almost chaunt-like. His dress is 
dark, almost always black or dark blue, relieved among the 
men only by a red or blue scarf round the waist ; among the 
women, by a white coiffe, like a nun's béguine. Marriages are 
contracted as readily and as improvidently as in Ireland : hos- 
pitality is a custom as well as a duty, and the poor, down to 
the most abject beggar, are " God's guests." 

The Leonard presents the gravest side of the Breton cha- 
racter, and has more in common with the Welsh than with the 
Irish Celt. 

But a parallel to the mingled joyousness and pathos of the 
Irish temperament is to be found in Brittany — among the 
Kernéwotes, the inhabitants of Comouaille, the district which 
lies round the mountains of Arré, between Morlaix to the north, 
and Pontivy to the south, bounded by the Léonais northwards, 
and southwards by the district of Vannes. The northern portion 
of this region is wild and barren; the southern, in parts at 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

least, smiling and amene. Its coast scenery, especially about 
Quimper, is grand and terrible. Round Penmarch (the Horse's 
head), one of the most westerly points of the Breton coast, the 
dash of the Atlantic on the rocky headland is as terrific as 
anything on our own Cornish coast. Under the shadow of this 
headland lay the town of Is, whose drowning is the subject of 
one of the ballads in this collection. 

Till within the last forty years mass used to be served once 
a year from a boat on the Menhirien (or Druid stones), which 
at low spring-tides rose above the sea, and were believed to be 
the altars of the buried city, while all the fishing-boats of the 
bay brought a devout population of worshippers to this Christian 
sacrifice at Druid altars. The Kernéwote of the coast has many 
points of resemblance with the Leonard. Like him, he is 
grave almost to gloom, austere, and self-restrained. He dwells 
habitually on the sadder aspects of his faith, and celebrates 
most respectfully its sadder ceremonials. But the Kernéwote 
of the interior is the Irishman of Brittany, mingling with the 
pathetic ground-tone, which everywhere underlies the Celtic 
character, flashes of humour and joyousness, giving himself up 
with passionate impulsiveness to the merriment of the marriage- 
feast, the wild excesses of the carouse at the fair or opening of 
the threshing-floor, the mad round of the jabadao, or the fierce 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

excitement of the foot-ball play or wrestling-match, which often 
winds up the Cornish pardons. His dress is of brilliant colours, 
always bordered with bright scarlet, blue, or violet : about 
Quimper are worn the bargou-braz, the loose, Turk-like 
breeches — a relic of the old Celtic garb. It is the costume of 
Cornouaille that is known popularly as Breton — the bright 
jacket and vest, often with the name of the tailor and the date 
of the make worked in coloured wools on the breast, the broad 
belt and buckle, the baggy breeches and gay leggings, and the 
hair falling on the shoulders from under a broad-brimmed felt 
hat, or on the coast, one with narrow brims, turned up at the 
edge, and decorated with a many-coloured woollen band, its 
ends flying in the wind. It is in Cornouaille that the old 
marriage ceremonial, with its elaborate diplomatic arrange- 
ments of Bazvalan and Breutaer* is kept up with most state 
and lavishness of outlay. The wrestling-bouts of this region 
are the most sharply contested and numerously attended. It 
is remarkable that wrestling — essentially a Celtic exercise — is 
in England confined to that side of the island where the Celtic 
nationality retained its latest hold ; and the wrestling practice 
of Cornouaille, even down to the favourite hugs and throws, 
may be paralleled by the laws of the game as still carried on 

* See their tongs in this volume, Part II. 



X INTRODUCTION. 

in Cumberland and Westmoreland, or in Devonshire and our 
own Cornwall. 

Tréguier, the third of the Breton districts having a distinct 
dialect and character, lies to the east of Leon, between it and 
Normandy, and includes the department of the Cotes du Nord. 
It takes in, besides the old bishopric of Tréguier, that of St. 
Brieuc, and part of that of Dol. The coast-line is less savage 
than that of Cornouaille, the air milder, the ground richer and 
better cultivated. It is emphatically the training-ground of 
the Breton priesthood, who receive their education in its semi- 
naries, and who have so largely contributed to mould the 
Breton character and imagination, as well by their songs as by 
their religious ministrations. The character of the Trégorrois 
is less rugged and severe than that of the Leonard or the 
Kernéwote of the coast — less excitable than that of the Kerné- 
wote of the mountain. There is something about it which, in 
comparison with the Breton character of other regions, may be 
called soft, gentle, and submissive. It is from its seminaries 
that the sentimental element infiltrates the popular poetry of 
Brittany. The Trégorrois is intensely religious, but attaches 
himself especially to those festivals of the Church which breathe 
hope and peace and goodwill. Nowhere in Brittany is Christmas 
observed so piously : nowhere are the places of pilgrimage so 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

famous or so largely resorted to as the shrines of St. Mathurin 
or Montcontour, or of Our Lady of Succour at Guingamp. 
Tréguier is the fountain-head of the religious canticles which 
fill such a large space in the poetry of Brittany ; and at 
Lannion are still played, or have been played within living 
memory, Breton tragedies like the old Celtic plays of our 
own Cornwall — historical as well as religious, lasting often for 
three days, and holding spell-bound, for many hours of each 
day, peasant-audiences assembled by thousands in the open-air 
theatre. 

The Kloarek, or seminarist of Tréguier, is generally a young 
peasant of sixteen or eighteen, who, having shown some vocation 
for the Church or a turn for books, has been sent by his parents 
(exulting in the honour of giving a son to the priesthood) to 
one of the seminaries which stud the Cotes du Nord. His 
student-life is more like that of the Scottish peasant sent to 
Glasgow or Edinburgh, St. Andrews or Aberdeen, with the 
intention of becoming a probationer of the Kirk of Scotland, 
than anything in England, or *,han the sharply regulated 
existence of the ordinary seminarist of Italy or other parts 
of France. He lives not in a college, but in a garret — often 
shared with four or five companions of his own class. He 
ekes out the poor maintenance which his parents can afford 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

him by hewing wood and drawing water, by serving about the 
inn-yards, and, if he is lucky enough to find pupils, by lessons 
in reading and writing at ten sous a month ! His father 
or mother on market-day brings the weekly provaunt of the 
young clerk — a scanty pittance of black bread, butter, bacon, 
or potatoes. 

The contrast between the rude misery of such a life and its 
destination to the awful and almost superhuman functions of the 
priest — the growing sense of culture and intellectual expansion 
warring with the hard facts of material existence — the sepa- 
ration from home pleasures and village intimates of both sexes 
— and the anticipation of a lot which isolates for ever from the 
delight of love and the happiness of family and fireside-life — 
are all provocative, according to the nature they work on, of sad 
and regretful emotion, or of a passionate and mystic asceticism. 
Both find Batumi expression in poetry ; the: regrets in elegy or 
idyllic song, the piety in canticles and hymns. It is, indeed, 
the Kloarek who is at once the hero and the poet of most of 
the Sônes, as the Breton songs ©f the former class are called ; 
and the author of the Buhez or legends of saints, and Ka- 
naouen or religious songs, dealing with such subjects as the 
farewells interchanged between soul and body at death, the 
horrors of hell, and the joys of heaven — the recital of which 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

makes one of the" principal entertainments of the "pardon. 
Tréguier, thanks to its Kloarek, is the nursery alike of the 
elegiac and religious popular poetry of Brittany. 

Vannes, which occupies the southern coast of Brittany, is the 
most thoroughly Celtic portion of the country. It is as thickly 
covered with cromlec'hs, lichvens, peulvans, menhirs, barrows, 
and dolmen,* as Léon is — or rather was before the Revolution — 
with Calvaries, bone-houses, wayside chapels, and shrines of the 
Virgin. On the heath of Lanvaux rises a forest of 120 menhirs: 
Trehorentec is a city of the dead, swelling with barroivs innu- 
merable : but all the Druidic monuments of Yannes, and of the 
world, not excepting Stonehenge, sink into secondary rank by 
the side of Carnac, with its eleven parallel ranges of peulvans, 
stretching for a length of more than two leagues to the horizon 
— huge blocks, many planted with the narrow end downwards, 
and some twenty feet in height. 

Yannes, too, is the site of the most memorable scenes of 
Breton romance and mediaeval history. Here is the castle of 
Clisson, the tower of Du Guesclin, the battle-field of the Thirty, 
the church of Ploermel with the tombs of the Dukes of Brittany, 



* Cromlec'hs are Druidic circles; lichvens, two vertical stones with a third laid 
across; menhirs arid peulvans, single stones set up on end; barrows, burial mounds; 
and dolmen, broad flat stones resting on smaller stone supports. 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

and the mystic forest of Broceliand, where Merlin lies in his 
enchanted sleep, under the spells of Vivien. 

Yannes is the home of the legends of gnomes and spirits, of 
dwarfs and fairies that haunt rocks and woods, streams and 
fountains, of the dus and mary-morgan, the poulpican, and 
the Jcorrigan* The foot-ball play of the Soule, in which 
villages and parishes contend for the mastery, limbs being 
broken and lives often lost in the fierce excitement of the 
struggle, is now confined to the district of Yannes. It was this 
region which furnished the most desperate elements to the 
Chouannerie; and the historic ballads f recording the prowess 
of Beaumanoir and Tinténiac, Du Guesclin, Jannedik Flamm, 
and Pontcalec, or the still earlier heroism of Noménoe and Lez- 
Breiz, Bran and Alan-al-Louarn, are still the nightly entertain- 
ment of its tavern-parties, its family-feasts, and pardons. 

Such are the leading divisions of the Breton population, 
among which has grown up, and is still preserved, a richer 
ballad literature, and a larger stock of popular idyllic and 
religious poetry, than exists in any part of Europe of the same 
extent. The national character and local circumstances of the 
Breton have singularly favoured the preservation and oral 

* Celtic fairies of the woods, streams, rocks, and springs. 
t See the following selection. 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

transmission of their popular poetry. They have always been 
a people set apart by blood, language, usages, and feelings, 
from the rest of France. The fusion of Celtic with the neigh- 
bouring nationality, which has effaced almost all traces of the 
race (except a few words of common use and names of places) 
in Cambria, Devon, and Cornwall, and has for centuries been 
actively at work even in Wales itself, has only begun to operate 
in Brittany since the Revolution, and at every step has been 
fiercely resisted. The upholding of national usages, faiths, cere- 
monies, traditions, and glories, has been ever a religion in 
Brittany ; and for the mass of the people song has been the 
sole instrument of their preservation. Manners here still retain 
their antique stamp — often a rude one, but often also beautiful 
and pathetic. The poetry that wells out of the Celtic nature 
wherever it is left to itself, has not had its course checked 
or crossed in Brittany by such influences as the Protestant 
Methodism of Wales, or the war of religion and races in Ireland. 
Ballads and canticles that were sung in the tenth, twelfth, and 
fourteenth centuries, are still handed down, by recitation, from 
father to son, from mother to child, among the peasants, 
beggars, and wandering " crowders," who have taken the place 
of the old bards. 

It is this essentially historical character which gives a dis- 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

tinctive peculiarity of the Breton ballads as compared with 
our own. Setting apart " Chevy Chace," the " Geste of Kobin 
Hood " — if its songs can be called historical — and some of the 
Border ballads, our own ballad literature has no strictly historical 
character. It is so difficult to identify its personages and inci- 
dents with any particular period or place as, in nineteen cases 
out of twenty, not to repay the labour of the attempt. The 
Breton ballad, as a rule, is sharply and distinctly historical. 
There is hardly one of the collection in the " Barsaz-Breiz " the 
incidents of which cannot be referred to their date, place, and 
particular actors. As all true ballad literature is contemporary, 
it is a fair inference that these ballads were originally composed 
while the memory of their subjects was still recent, though, 
in the process of oral transmission for generations, they have 
of course undergone all manner of modification and mutilation. 
The Yicomte de la Yillemarque, the accomplished editor of the 
"Barsaz-Breiz" (or poetic treasury of Brittany), is a Breton, 
of old and noble family, inspired by that ardent love of his 
country and race which is the dominant feeling of the Breton. 
His mother — still I believe alive — many years ago began col- 
lecting the ballads and songs of the country, and he continued 
the work, aided not only by his own active researches, but by 
the elergy and resident nobles and gentry, without whose help — 



INTRODUCTION. X v 1 1 

beyond the range of his own family influence — he would have 
found it impossible to overcome the ingrained distrust of the 
Breton peasant. He informs us in his preface that his habit 
has been to obtain all the versions he could of the same ballad, 
and the only liberty he has taken has been in choosing between 
more and less complete versions — proceeding on the sound 
theory that the fullest in detail and most picturesque in colour 
were likely to be the oldest. The result has been a body of 
ballads with as distinct and consistent an impress of their time 
upon them as the very best preserved examples in the Border 
Minstrelsy. 

Besides the literature of the guerz, or ballad, properly so 
called, whether it describe historical incident or individual 
adventure, of crime, sorrow, or suffering — for hardly one of the 
ballads is of a light or cheerful cast — M. de la Villemarque has 
obtained from oral recitation portions of an older poetry, less 
popular, and the work of the comparatively cultivated and 
learned class of the later bards, whose epoch closes with the 
sixth century. 

Of this order are the earlier examples in my selection — 
"The Wine of the Gauls," "The Prediction of Gwenc'hlan," 
"The Lord Nann and the Fairy," "The March of Arthur," 
" The Plague of Elliant," and " The Drowning of Kaer-Is." 



XVlll INTRODUCTION. 

Generally these earlier poems are distinguished by the presence 
of alliteration as well as rhyme, by the more or less complete 
division into triplets, and by a distinctly archaic impress in the 
manners described and the feelings of the singer. 

After these come the historic and narrative ballads, which 
cover a time extending from the eleventh century to the present 
day. My present selection includes none subsequent to the 
later half of the fourteenth century. They bear few traces of 
modernisation, as far as I am able to judge. I cannot pretend 
to form any estimate of antiquity from the language, of which 
my knowledge — mainly derived from the study of the ballads 
themselves, with the help of M. de la Villemarques literal 
French translation, and Legonidec's Breton Grammar and 
Dictionary — is too imperfect to justify me in giving any opinion. 
But I can feel "the keeping" of the narrative, style, and 
thoughts, and I can detect scarcely anything by this class of 
tests that seems to me like modern interpolation. 

Besides a selection from the historical ballads, which might 
have been doubled in bulk without introducing anything less 
vivid and stirring than is to be found in this volume, I 
have made a selection from the sônes, or idyllic songs of the 
peasantry, both those appropriate to peculiar occasions — as the 
" Songs of Marriage," of " The June Feast," " The Shepherd's 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

Call/' "The New Threshing-Floor,"— and others, like "The 
Leper/' and "The Miller's Wife of Pontaro," which approach 
more nearly to the ballad, and the second of which is an almost 
unique specimen of the satiric and humorous guerz, which form 
a large part of the stock of the travelling tailors or rag-gatherers 
(pillaouer), who, with the beggars and blind players on rote or 
biniou, are the chief minstrels of the Breton peasantry. There 
are also tender and pathetic occasional songs — such as "The 
May Flowers," " The Swallows," " The Poor Clerk "—which are 
generally due to the reveries and regrets of some young semi- 
narist of Tréguier, but are sometimes also, as in the case of the 
two first mentioned, the composition of the peasants themselves. 

My present limits have not allowed me to include examples 
of the religious canticles, which are as distinctive a feature of 
the Breton popular poetry as the historical guerz or the idyllic 
sône. This want may be supplied, and my selection of his- 
torical ballads enlarged, should a second edition of this book be 
called for. 

The conditions of space imposed on me, were there no other 
reason, would debar me from entering on a wider inquiry, which 
would not have been foreign to the nature of my work, and 
which has a deep interest of its own— a comparison of the 
popular poetry of Brittany with that of the other Celtic races 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. But this would require a 
volume to itself, and I feel that the inquiry demands an amount 
of knowledge of the Celtic language and literature to which 
I make no pretensions. The subject is one well worth the 
attention of Celtic scholars. 

All the Breton ballads are rhymed, the older ones being often 
alliterative as well. The commonest metres are a shorter iambic 
one of eight feet, in couplets or triplets (in the older examples), 
and a longer anapaestic one in quatrains. I can elaim for 
my translations one merit, if they have no other — that is, the 
utmost fidelity to the originals, both in metrical form and in 
expression, that I could give it. The only liberty I have taken 
is an occasional resort to certain English ballad locutions and 
repetitions, which have their almost exact parallel in the Breton, 
and to a few Scotticisms, which, from the large proportion of 
Scotch and north-country ballads in our national stock of such 
compositions, have become almost a common property of the 
ballad style. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

HISTORICAL SONGS AND BALLADS. 

PAGE 

TIIE WINE OF THE GAULS, AND THE DANCE OF TIIE STVORD . 1 

THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIRY . . . . • . . . 9 

THE PREDICTION OF GWENC'HLAN 15 

THE MARCH OF ARTHUR 23 

ALAN-THE-FOX 27 

THE DROWNING OF EAER-IS 31 

THE EYIL TRIBUTE OF NOMÉNOÊ 39 

BRAN . . 51 

THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT 61 

THE RETURN FROM SAXON-LAND 67 

THE CRUSADER'S WIFE 71 

THE CLERK OF ROHAN 79 

BARON JAUÏOZ 93 

THE GOSS-HAWK 103 

THE FOSTER-BROTHER 109 

THE NIGHTINGALE 119 



xxn CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

"THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY" 125 

JEAN 0' THE FLAME 135 

du guesclin's VASSAL 141 

THE WEDDING- GIRDLE . . 149 

PART II. 
SONGS USED ON DOMESTIC AND FESTIVE OCCASIONS. 

THE FLOWERS OF MAY 161 

THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE 165 

THE SONG OF THE JUNE FEAST . . ... . . .175 

THE SONG OF THE NEW THRESHING-FLOOR 179 

THE SHEPHERD'S CALL 183 

THE LEPER 187 

THE MILLER'S WIFE OF PONTARO 193 

THE SILVER MIRRORS . . 197 

THE CROSS BY THE WAY . . . ... . 201 

THE SWALLOWS 205 

THE POOR CLERK 209 

THE SONG OF THE SOULS IN PAIN 213 

APPENDIX. 

ORIGINAL BRETON AIRS HARMONIZED 217 



PAET I. 
HISTORICAL SONGS AND BALLADS. 



THE WINE OF THE GAULS, AND THE 
DANCE OF THE SWOBD. 

(GWIN AR CHALLAOUED, HA KOROL AR C'HLEZE.) 



[The " Gauls," whose wine is praised in this savage chaunt, were the Franks, on 
whose vineyards and cellars Gregory of Tours describes the comparatively uncivilised 
Bretons as making regular autumnal raids. Thierry, in his "Récits Merovingiens," 
supposes the chauut here translated to be one of those in which successful forays of 
this kind were celebrated. It is still sung in the Breton taverns, but M. de la Yille- 
marque informs us that the sense of much of it is lost among the peasants from 
whose recitation he picked it up, and he is by no means sure either of the complete- 
ness of his own version, or of the correctness of his interpretation in all points. The 
wines of the district about Nantes seem to be referred to, as they are white. The 
other drinks enumerated — that made of mulberry juice, beer, mead, and cider — were 
in old times, and still are (the three latter at least), national beverages of Brittany. 
It is probable, as M. de la Villemarque conjectures, that two chaunts are here welded 
together : the second, begiuning at the thirteenth stanza, seeuis to be a fragment of 
the song that accompanied the old Celtic sword-dance in honour of the Sun. The 
language of this portion of the chaunt is more antique than that of the preceding 
stanzas. In both, however, the alliteration is nearly perfect — an acknowledged sign 
of antiquity. The rhythm suggests a measured accompaniment of tramping feet and 
clashing swords ; and the wild chorus, invoking fire and sword, oak, and earth, and 
waves, carries us back to the early times of Druidic elemental worship, as the whole 
composition breathes a ferocious delight in blood and battle, smacking little of 
Christian doctrine or discipline.] 




THE WINE OF THE GAULS, 



ETTER, juice of vine 
Than berry wine : 
Better juice of vine ! 

Fire ! fire ! steel, Oh ! steel ! 

Fire, fire ! steel and fire ! 

Oak ! oak, earth, and waves ! 

Waves, oak, earth, and oak ! 



Better wine o' the year 

Than our beer, — 
Better wine o' the year ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Better blood grapes bleed 

Than our mead,— 
Better blood grapes bleed I 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Better drink o' the vine 

Than apple wine, — 
Better drink o' the vine ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 



AND THE DANCE OF THE SWORD. 

Dunghill Gaul, to thee, 

Leaf and tree, — 
Stock and leaf to thee ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Valiant Breton, thine 
The white wine, — 
Valiant Breton, thine ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Wine and blood they run 

Blent in one, — 
Wine and blood they run ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

White wine and red blood, 

Fat and good, — 
White wine and red blood ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Red blood and white wine, 

Bright of shine, — 
Red blood and white wine ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 



THE WINE OF THE GAULS, 

Tis the Gauls' blood 

Runs in flood, — 
'Tis the Gauls' blood ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

I've drunk wine and gore 

In the war, — 
I've drunk wine and gore ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Wine and blood they feed, 

Fat indeed, — 
Wine and blood they feed ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 



II. 



Blood, wine, and glee, 

Sun, to thee, — 
Blood, wine, and glee ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 



AND THE DANCE OF THE SWORD. 

Glee of dance and song, 
And battle -throng, — 
Battle, dance, and song ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Let the sword-blades swing- 
In a ring, — 
Let the sword-blades swing ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Song of the blue steel, 

Death to feel, — 
Song of the blue steel ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Fight, whereof the sword 

Is the Lord, — 
Fight of the fell sword ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 

Sword, thou mighty king 

Of battle's ring, — 
Sword, thou mighty king ! 

Fire ! fire, &c. 



THE WINE OF THE GAULS. 

With the rainbow's light 

Be thou bright, — 
With the rainbow's light ! 

Fire ! fire ! steel, Oh ! steel ! 

Fire, fire ! steel and fire ! 

Oak ! oak, earth, and waves ! 

Waves, oak, earth, and oak ! 



THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIEY. 

(AOTROU NANN HAG AR GORRIGAN.) 

[The "Korrigan" of Breton superstition is found both in Scotland and in Ireland. 
" Korr" means dwarf, and il gan" or li gwen" is interpreted by M. de la Ville- 
marque " genius " or " spirit." The " Korrigan " is nearly identical with the "elf" 
of Scandinavian mythology, and Danish ballads may be found in which the "elf" 
plays exactly the same part to a belated hunter as the Korrigan to the Lord Nann in 
the following ballad. As in other cases, I have been careful to follow the metre and 
divisions into stanzas of the original. The latter is important, as the triplet always 
indicates considerable antiquity in Cambrian and Armorican rhymed compositions. 
The old Celtic bardism especially affected " triads," or division into threes.] 



^^ft 




HE good Lord Nann and his fair bride, 



Were young when wedlock's knot was tied- 
Were young when death did them divide. 



But yesterday that lady fair 

Two babes as white as snow did bear ; 

A man-child and a girl they were. 

" Now, say what is thy heart's desire, 
For making me a man-child's sire ? 
Tis thine, whate'er thou may'st require. 



10 THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIRY. 

" What food soe'er thee lists to take, 
Meat of the woodcock from the lake, 
Meat of the wild deer from the brake." 

" Oh, the meat of the deer is dainty food ! 

To eat thereof would do me good, 

But I grudge to send thee to the wood." 

The Lord of Nann, when this he heard, 
Hath gripp'd his oak spear with never a Word ; 
His bonny black horse he hath leap'd upon, 
And forth to the greenwood he hath gone. 

By the skirts of the wood as he did go, 
He was 'ware of a hind as white as snow ; 

Oh, fast she ran, and fast he rode, 

That the earth it shook where his horse-hoofs trode. 

Oh, fast he rode, and fast she ran, 

That the sweat to drop from his brow began — 



THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIRY. 11 

That the sweat on his horse's flanks stood white ; 
So he rode and rode till the fall o' the night. 

When he came to a stream that fed a lawn, 
Hard by the grot of a Corrigaun. 

The grass grew thick by the streamlet's brink, 
And he lighted down off his horse to drink. 

The Corrigaun sat by the fountain fair, 
A-combing her long and yellow hair. 

A-combing her hair with a comb of gold, — 
(Not poor, I trow, are those maidens cold). — 

" Now who's the bold wight that dares come here 
To trouble my fairy fountain clear ? 

" Either thou straight shalt wed with me, 
Or pine for four long years and three ; 
Or dead in three days' space shalt be." 

" I will not wed with thee, I ween, 
For wedded man a year I've been ; 



12 THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIRY. 

" Nor yet for seven years will I pine, 
Nor die in three days for spell of thine ; 

" For spell of thine I will not die, 
But when it pleaseth God on high. 

" But here, and now, I'd leave my life, 
Ere take a Corrigaun to wife." 

" Oh mother, mother ! for love of me, 
Now make my bed, and speedily, 
For I am sick as a man may be. 

" Oh, never the tale to my ladye tell ; 
Three days and ye'll hear my passing-bell ; 
The Corrigaun hath cast her spell." 

Three days they pass'd, three days were sped ; 
To her mother-in-law the ladye said : 

" Now tell me, madam, now tell me, pray, 
Wherefore the death-bells toll to-day ? 



THE LORD NAXN AND THE FAIRY. 13 

" Why chaimt the priests in the street below, 
All clad in their vestments white as snow ? " 

" A strange poor man, who harbour'd here, 
He died last night, my daughter dear." 

" But tell me, madam, my lord, your son — 
My husband — whither is he gone % " 

" But to the town, my child, he's gone ; 
And at your side he'll be back anon." 

" What gown for my churching were't best to wear, — 
My gown of grain, or of watchet fair ? " 

" The fashion of late, my child, hath grown, 
That women for churching black should don." 

As through the churchyard porch she stept, 
She saw the grave where her husband slept. 

" WTio of our blood is lately dead, 

That our ground is new raked and spread ? " 



14 THE LORD NANN AND THE FAIRY. 

" The truth I may no more forbear, 

My son — your own poor lord — lies there ! " 

She threw herself on her knees amain, 
And from her knees ne'er rose again. 

That night they laid her, dead and cold, 
Beside her lord, beneath the mould ; 
When, lo ! — a marvel to behold ! — 

Next morn from the grave two oak-trees fair, 
Shot lusty boughs high up in air ; 

And in their boughs^ — oh, wondrous sight ! — 
Two happy doves, all snowy white — 

That sang, as ever the morn did rise, 
And then flew up — into the skies ! 






THE PBEDICTION OF GWENC'HLAN. 

(DIOUGAX GWEBTC'HLAK) 

[Among the bards who, in the fourth and fifth centuries of our epoch, resisted 
the invasion of Druidism by Christianity, the name of Kian, surnamed "Gwenc'hlan" 
(meaning "pure of race"), has been preserved to us in one of the fragments attri- 
buted to Taliesin, who speaks of him as one he had known in his youth, a composer 
of songs in honour of his country and its heroes. Nennius speaks of him, with 
Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarc'h Henn, as one of the most illustrious of bards "in 
poemate Britannico. " Prophecies (Diouganou) ascribed to him existed in a MS. of 
the fifteenth century, preserved till the Revolution in the Abbey of Landévénec. 
This MS., in all probability the transcript of one much more ancient, perished in the 
Revolutionary troubles. Some fragments of it have escaped, which are quoted by 
M. de la Yillemarque, in which Gwenc'hlan appears in the triple character of wizard, 
instructor in agriculture, and warlike bard. It is to him in the latter category that 
the savage song here translated refers. It is known both in Northern and Lower 
Brittany, and exists in the dialect of Tréguier as well as in that of Cornouaille. 
It is in the form of a prophecy. The tradition is that Gwenc'hlan, being taken 
prisoner by a hostile prince, was by him blinded, imprisoned, and left to die in a 
dungeon. In this low estate Gwenc'hlan prop\esies the defeat and destruction of the 
enemy. The poem has numerous points of resemblance with the surviving fragments 
of Taliesin and Llywarc'h Henn ; and among them is the allusion to the three cycles 
of existence, a dogma of the Druidic faith. " I have been thrice born," says Taliesin. * 
1 ' 1 have been dead : I have been alive : I am what I was. I have been a hind on 
the hill : I have been a gay-plumaged cock : I have been a dun fawn. Now I am 
Taliesin." Of course the language of this fierce denunciation has lost much of its 
antique character, but the grim savageness of its sentiment is as intense as ever.] 



Myvyrian Anthology," vol. i., pp. 36, 37. 



16 



THE PREDICTION OF GWENC'HLAN. 




HEN the sun sets and flood-tides roar. 
I sit and sing beside my door. 



When I was young I loved to sing ; 
Now I am old to song I cling. 

I sing by night, I sing by day, 
For all my heart within is wae. 

If head be bowed, and heart be sore, 
Reason enow have I therefor. 

It is not that I go in fear, . 

I would not shake though death were near. 

It is not fear of death ; I trow 
Of living I have had enow. 



The hands that seek me not shall find, 
The eyes that seek me shall be blind. 



THE PREDICTION OF GWEXc'lILAX. 17 



Little I reck what time may hide, 

Man's weird is wrought in Fate's good tide. 



The gate of death must thrice be past 
By all, before they rest at last. 



II. 



I see the boar break from the wood, 
His hurt foot leaves its print in blood. 

Blood clots the jaws that gape for rage 
His bristles they show grey with age. 

Round him a sounder of his brood, 
All grunting, ravenous for food. 

Lo, where a sea-horse braves the boar, 
That all for terror shakes the shore ! 

He shineth white as shining snows ; 
Two silver horns his frontlet shows. 



18 THE PREDICTION OF GWENC'HLAN. 

Beneath his feet white seethes the foam 
With fires that from his nostrils come. 

About him the sea-horses go 

As thick as mere-side sedges grow. 

" Hold firm ! hold firm, horse of the sea ! 
At the boar's head ! Strike lustily ! 

" The naked feet slip in the gore : 
Strike swifter, sorer and more sore ! 



" I see the blood-gouts stream amain : 
Strike harder yet, and yet again ! 



" I see the blood rise to the knee : 

I see the blood spread like a sea ! 

II Strike harder ! Strike at head and breast ! 
To-morrow thou may'st take thy rest. 

" Strike hard ! Strike, sea-horse, stout and strong ! 
Strike at the head ! strike loud and long ! " 



THE PREDICTION OF GWENC'HLAN. 19 



III. 



In my cold grave as I lay still, 

I beard the midnight erne scream shri] 



JD 



He bade bis eaglets to be yare, 
And all the wild birds of the air. 

Unto the wild birds he 'gan call, 

" Up on your wide wings, great and small ! 

" No carrion feast of sheep or hound ; 
'Tis man's meat reeks up from the ground. 

" Grey raven from the sea-cliff bare, 
Tell me what quarry grip'st thou there ?" 

" There's a chieftain's head my claws between, 
Wherefrom to pike the two red een. 

" His two foul een they shall be mine, 
For that his hand did tear out thine." 



20 THE PREDICTION OF GWENC'HLAN, 

" Red fox, that wily art and ware, 

Tell me what quarry grip'st thou there ?" 

" I hold his heart in my jaw-bone, 
That was as false as is my own. 

" The heart that schemed to work thee woe, 
Doomed thee to lingering death and slow." 

" And thou, foul toad, what hast to do, 
Squat by the corner of his mou V 

" I wait beside the traitor's lip, 

To watch when forth his soul shall slip. 

" In my foul form that soul shall dwell, 
To quit him for his work of hell 

" Wrought on the bard, that dwells no more 
'Tween Roch-allaz and Porth-gwenn shore." 



THE MARCH OF ARTHUR, 

(BALE ARZUB.) 



[M. de la Villemarque, to whom we owe the Breton original of " The March 
of Arthur," which he obtained from the recitation of an old mountaineer of Leuhan, 
called Mikel Floc'h, informs us that these triplets were sung in chorus, as late as the 
Chouan war, by the Breton peasants, as they marched to battle against the Republican 
soldiers. The belief in the appearance of Arthur's host on the mountains, headed by 
their mystic chief, — who awakens from his charmed sleep in the Valley of Avalon 
whenever war impends over his beloved Cymry, — is common to all the Celtic races, 
and may be compared with a similar faith as to Holger among the Danes, Barbarossa 
among the Germans, and Marco among the Servians. Sir Walter Scott has recorded 
the belief entertained in the Highlands of the apparition of mounted warriors riding 
along the precipitous flanks of the mountains, where no living horse could keep his 
footing. The apparition of this ghostly troop is always held to portend war ; and it is 
no doubt the same which the Celtic bard has here described as arrayed under Arthur. 
The ancient air to which the triplets are sung (which will be found among the musical 
accompaniments in the Appendix) is a wild and warlike march; and the peasant who 
chanted it to De la Villemarque tGld him it was always sung three times over. The 
composition is an ancient one, and contains many words now obsolete in Brittany, 
though still found in the Cymric of Wales. The last triplet is a late addition.] 



RAMP, tramp, tramp, tramp to battle Jin ! 
Tramp son, tramp sire, tramp kith and kin ! 
Tramp one, tramp all, have hearts within. 




24 THE MARCH OF ARTHUR. 

The chieftain's son his sire addrest, 
As morn awoke the world from rest : 
" Lo ! warriors on yon mountain crest — 

" Lo ! warriors armed, their course that hold 
On grey war-horses riding bold, 
With nostrils snorting wide for cold !' 

" Rank closing up on rank I see, 
Six by six, and three by three, 
Spear-points by thousands glinting free. 

" Now rank on rank, twos front they go, 
Behind a flag which to and fro 
Sways, as the winds of death do blow ! 

" Nine sling-casts' length from van to rear — 

I know 'tis Arthur's hosts appear ; — 

There Arthur strides — that foremost peer ! " 

" If it be Arthur— Ho ! what, ho ! 

Up spear ! out arrow ! Bend the bow ! 

Forth, after Arthur, on the foe ! " 



THE MARCH OF ARTHUR. 25 

The chieftain's words were hardly spoke, 
When forth the cry of battle broke — 
From end to end the hills it woke : 

" Be 't head for hand, and heart for eye, 
Death-wound for scratch — a-low, on high, — 
Matron for maid, and man for boy ! 

" Stone-horse for mare, for heifers steers, 
War-chief for warrior, youth for years, 
And fire for sweat, and blood for tears. 

"And three for one — by strath and scaur, 

By day, by night, till near and far 

The streams run red with waves of war ! 

" If in the fight we fall, so best ! 
Bathed in our blood — a baptism blest — 
With joyous hearts we'll take our rest. 

" If we but fall where we have fought, 
As Christian men and Bretons ought, 
Such death is ne'er too early sought." 



ALAN-THE-FOX. 

(ALAN-AL-LOUARN.) 

[Alan, surnamed "of the Twisted-beard" in Breton history, and " the Fox" 
in Breton popular tradition, after a youth spent in hunting down the wolves and 
bears of our own island — according to the monastic chronicler of Saint Brieuc* — put 
himself at the head of the Bretons, in a determined and successful attack on the 
Normans, near Dolf (a.d. 937), and, after defeating them in a second engagement at 
Saint Brieuc, was hailed chief by the assembled Bretons. M. de la Villernarque, after 
citing the historic references to the hero of this spirited ballad, states that he took it 
down from the recitation of an old peasant of Lan-huel-en-Arez, who in his youth 
had fought in the Chouan war, under Georges Cadoudal. M. de la Villernarque asked 
him who was the chief referred to in the ballad : " General Georges, of course," was 
the reply. Cadoudal was, in fact, known among his peasant soldiers by the sobriquet 
of "the Fox," well earned by his sagacity and aptitude for stratagem. The Normans 
are here described as "Gauls" and "Saxons," the names generally given by the 
Bretons to all enemies of their nationality; and the allusion to "the short-haired 
ears " is explained by the Norman practice of cutting the hair and beard, in contra- 
distinction to the fashion of the Bretons, who have always worn flowing hair and 
moustache. ] 



HE fox with a beard he yelps, — yelp yelp ! yelp 
yelp ! in the glades ; 
Strange coneys, to your burrows ! His eyes are 
two bright blades ! 

* Quoted by Dom. Morice in his "Histoire de Bretagne." 

t "Chronicon Nannetense," quoted by Dom. Morice, vol. i., p. 145. 




28 ALAN-THE-FOX. 

His fangs are sharp ; his feet are swift ; his claws drop gore ; 
Alan-the-Fox he yelps — yelp yelp ! — to war, to war ! 

I've seen the Bretons whetting their weapons, one and all, 
Not on a Breton whetstone, but on harness of the Gaul. 

I've seen the Bretons reaping upon the battle field, 

'Twas not blunted sickles, but sharp swords that they did wield. 

They reaped not our own buckwheat, nor the rye of our 

Bretayne, 
But the beardless Saxon ears, and the short-haired Gaulish grain. 

They are not flails of wood the Bretons take to thresh their wheat, 
But stout staves shod with iron, and armed horses' feet. 

I heard the cry the threshers raise when they've threshed out 

all the corn : 
It rang from Mount St. Michael to the valley of Elorn. 

From the Abbey of St. Weltas to the point of Finisterre, 
And to Brittany's four corners the Fox's fame did bear. 



ALAN-THE-FOX. 29 

Honour and laud for ever be the Fox's due reward ; 
This song for aye remember, and give pity to the bard. 



The bard who suns this song the first, song since hath never 



Ah me, the hapless singer ! The Gauls cut out his tongue. 

But if his tongue be severed, his heart e'en yet is strong, 
And still his hand is stout on harp to shoot the shafts of song ! 



THE DBOWNING OF KAEB-IS.* 

(LIVADEN GER-IS.) 

[The anonymous chronicler of Ravenna mentions a town, which be calls Ker-is, 
as existing in Armorica in the fifth century. Here ruled a prince called Gradlonvawre 
i.e. Gradlon the Great. Gradlon was the protector of Gwénolé, the founder of the 
first abbey established in Brittany. The following ballad (the original of which M. de 
Villemarque obtained from the recitation of Thomas Pen-venn, — i.e. Whitehead — a 
peasant of Tiégunk) narrates the popular tradition of the destruction of the town by 
the king's daughter, Dahut, who opened a sluice, which kept out the sea, by a key 
stolen from her sleeping father, after an orgie, at her lover's bidding. This tradition 
is common to all the Celtic races. It is found in Wales and in Ireland. In the 
former country the King is Seizenin, the drowned town Gwaeleod, and its site in 
Cardigan Bay, where the fishermen still talk of the ruins of ancient buildings seen 
by them at the bottom of the sea when the tide is lower than usual. In Ireland the 
town is Neagh, and our readers will remember the allusion to the sunken town in 
Moore's graceful lines : 

" On Lough Neagh's banks when the fisherman strays, 
At the hour of eve's declining, 
He sees the round towers of other days 
Beneath the waters shining." 

Gwezno, a Welsh bard, whose date is referred to the fifth century, but whose 
poems are found in a manuscript ascribed to the ninth, has a poem on the subject 
(included in the Myvyrian Archaeology) which begins with the awakening of the 
king : 

"Arise, oh Seizenin, and look forth— the land of warriors, the fields of Gwezno, are 
invaded by the sea ! " 



* " Kaer-Is," i.e. Is-Town, "caer" being the same word that enters into our 
own Car-lisle, the Celtic "Caer-Leon," — Caer-marthen — Caer- laverock. 



32 



THE DROWNING OF KAER-IS. 



A chronicler, whose work is preserved in the Chartulary of Landven, attributes 
to Gradlon the introduction of wine into Brittany. 

Marie of France, who tells the story of the drowning of Ts-town in one of her 
Lais (Gradlon-meur), speaks of Gradlon's horse as having saved his master's life for a 
long time by swimming, and as having become wild with grief when the king fell off 
at last, and was drowned. 

In another version it is the princess who is drowned. Her father is bearing her 
off, en croupe, when an awful voice thrice bids him fling off the demon who sits 
behind him. He does so, and the inundation is arrested. 

Before the Revolution, King Gradlon's statue, mounted on his faithful horse, 
used to stand between the towers of the Cathedral of Quimper, and every year, on 
Saint Cecily's day, a minstrel used to mount the croup of the royal charger, with a 
napkin, a flagon of wine, and a golden hanap, all provided at the cost of the cathedral 
chapter. He used to put the napkin round the neck of the statue, pour the wine from 
the flagon into the hanap, put it to the statue's lips, and then, draining the liquor, fling 
the hanap among the crowd gathered below, to do honour to the introducer of the grape. 

The poem, says M. de la Villemarque, from whose learned notes I have taken the 
above information, is very antique in rhythmical structure and in language. 

Its rude picturesqueness needs no pointing out, nor the dramatic skill and life 
with which the action of the story is sketched out. In this respect these Breton 
ballads seem to me unequalled by anything of their class. As in all the other trans- 
lations in this volume, I have been scrupulously literal.] 




EAKD ye the word the man of God 
Spake to King Gradlon, blythe of mood, 
Where in fair Kaer-Is he abode ? 



" Sir King, of dalliance be not fain, 
From evil loves thy heart refrain, 
For hard on pleasure followeth pain. 



THE DROWNING OF KAER-IS. 33 

" Who feeds his fill on fish of sea 
To feed the fishes doom'd is he ; 
The swallower swallow'd up shall be. 

" Who drinks of the wine and the barley-brew, 
Of water shall drink as the fishes do ; — 
Who knows not this shall learn 'tis true." 



II. 



Unto his guests King Gradlon said. 
" My merry feres, the day is sped ; 
I will betake me to my bed. 

" Drink on, drink on, till morning light, 
In feast and dalliance waste the night ; 
For all that will the board is dight." 

To Gradlon's daughter, bright of blee, 

Her lover he whisper'd, tenderly : 

" Bethink thee, sweet Dahut, the key ! ' 



34 THE DROWNING OF KAER-IS. 

" Oh ! I'll win the key from my father's side, 
That bolts the sluice and bars the tide ; 
To work thy will is thy lady's pride." 



III. 



Whoso that ancient king had seen, 
Asleep in his bed of the golden sheen, 
Dumb-stricken all for awe had been — 

To see him laid in his robe of grain, 

His hair like snow, on his white hause-bane,* 

And round his neck his golden chain. 

Whoso had watch'd that night, I weet, 
Had seen a maiden stilly fleet 
In at the door, on naked feet, 

To the old King's side, she hath stolen free, 
And hath kneeled her down upon her knee, 
And lightly hath ta en both chain and key. 

Hause," " hals-bine," neck-bone, often useJ in the old Scottish ballads. 



THE DROWNING OF KAER-TS. 37 



IV. 



He sleepeth still, he sleejDeth sound, 
When, hark, a cry from the lower ground- 
" The sluice is oped, Kaer-Is is drown 'd ! 

" Awake, Sir King, the gates unspar ! 
Rise up, and ride both fast and far ! 
The sea flows over bolt and bar ! " 

Now cursed for ever mote she be, 

That all for wine and harlotry, 

The sluice unbarr'd that held the sea ! 



" Say, woodman, that wonn'st in the forest green, 
The wild horse of Gradlon hast thou seen, 
As he pass'd the valley-walls between ? " 

" On Gradlon's horse I set not sight, 

But I heard him go by in the dark of night, 

Trip, trep, — trip, trep, — like a fire-flaught white ! 



38 THE DROWNING OF KAER-IS. 

" Say, fisher, the mermaid hast thou seen, 
Combing her hair by the sea-waves green — 
Her hair like gold in the sunlight sheen ? " 

" I saw the white maiden of the sea, 
And I heard her chaunt her melody, 
And her song was sad as the wild waves be." 



THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMÉNOÉ. 

(DROUK-KINNIG NEUMEXOIOU.) 

[Noménol: was the Alfred of the Bretons, their deliverer from the Franks under 
Charles the Bald, in the 9th century (a.d. 841). He is a strictly historical personage. 
Under him the Bretons succeeded in driving the immensely superior force of the 
Franks beyond the rivers l'Oust and Vilaine ; pushed their frontier as far as 
Poitou, and rescued from the hands of the invader the towns of Nantes and Rennes, 
which have remained included in Brittany from the date of their deliverance by 
Noraénoc. This very spirited ballad was obtained by M. de la Yillemarquc, from the 
oral recitation of a peasant of Kergerez. As in my other translations of Breton 
ballads, I have adhered to the metre and couplet-divisions of the original, line for line.] 

FYTTE I. 



c^=gjg HE herb of gold * is cut : a cloud 




Across the sky hath spread its shroud 
To war ! 



" The storm- wreaths gather, grim and grey," 
Quoth the great chief of Mount Are. 

" These three weeks past so thick they fall, 
Towards the marches of the Gaul 

* The "herb of gold" is the mystic selage. According to Breton superstition, 
iron cannot approach it without the sky clouding, and disaster following. 



40 THE EVIL TEIBUTE OF NOMENOÈ. 

" So thick, that I no ways can see 
My son returning unto me. 

" Good merchant, farer to and fro, 
Hast tidings of my son, Karô ? " 

" Mayhap, old chieftain of Are ; 
But what his kind and calling say." 

" He is a man of heart and brains, 
To Roazon * he drove the wains ; 

" The wains to Eoazon drove he, 

Horsed with good horses, three by three, — 

" That drew fair-shared among them all, 
The Breton's tribute to the Gaul." 

" If thy son's wains the tribute bore, 
He will return to thee no more. 

" When that the coin was brought to scale, 
Three pounds were lacking to the tale. 

* The Breton name of Renaes. 



THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMENOÊ. 41 

" Then outspake the Intendant straight : 
' Vassal, thy head shall make the weight ! ' 

" With that his sword forth he abrade, 

And straight smote off the young man's head ; 

" And by the hair the head he swung, 
And in the scale, for makeweight, flung." 

The old chief at that cruel sound, 
Him seem'd as he would fall in swound. 

Stark on the rocks he grovell'd there — 
His face hid with his hoary hair ; 

And, head on hand, made heavy moan : 
" Karô, my son — my darling son ! " 



PYTTE II. 

Then forth he fares, that aged man, 
And after him his kith and clan ; 



42 THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMENOE. 

The aged chieftain fareth straight 
Unto Noménoe s castle-gate. 

" Now, tell me, tell me, thou porter bold, 
If that thy master be in hold ? 

" But, be he in, or be he out, 

God guard from harm that chieftain stout." 

Or ever he had pray'd his prayer, 
Behold, Noménoe was there ! 

His quarry from the chase he bore, 
His great hounds gambolling before : 

In his right hand his bow unbent ; 
A wild-boar on his back uphent. 

On his white hand, all fresh and red, 

The blood dripp'd from the wild-boar's head. 

" Fair fall you, honest mountain-clan, 
Thee first, as chief, thou white-hair'd man. 



THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMENOE. 43 

" Your news, your news, come tell to me : 
What would you of Noménoê ? " 

" We come for right ; to know, in brief, 
Hath Heaven a God, — Bretayne a chief? " 

" Heaven hath a God, I trow, old man ; 
Bretayne a chief, if ought I can." 

" He can that will, thereof no doubt, 
And he that can the Frank drives out — 

" Drives out the Frank, defends the land, 
To avenge, and still avenge, doth stand ; — 

" To avenge the living and the dead, 
Me and my fair son foully sped ; 

" My Karô, whose brave head did fall 
By hand of the accursed Gaul. 

" They flung his head the weights to square ; 
Like ripe wheat shone the golden hair." 



44 THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMENOE. 

Therewith the old man wept outright, 
That tears ran down his beard so white, 

Like dew-drops on a lily flower, 
That glitter at the sun-rise hour. 

When of those tears the chief was ware, 
A stern and bloody oath he sware : 

" I swear it, by this wild-boar's head, 
And by the shaft that laid him dead, 

" Till this plague's wash'd from out the land. 
This blood I wash not off my hand ! " 



FYTTE III. 

Noménoe hath done, I trow, 
What never chieftain did till now ; 

Hath sought the sea-beach, sack in hand, 
To gather pebbles from the strand — 



THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMÉNOÊ. 47 

Pebbles as tribute-toll to bring 
The Intendant of the baldhead king. 

Noménoé hath done, I trow, 
What never chieftain did till now. 

Prince as he is, hath ta'en his way, 
The tribute-toll himself to pay. 



" Fling wide the gates of Roazon, 
That I may enter in, anon. 

" Noménoe comes within your gate, 
His wains all piled with silver freight." 

" Light down, my lord, into the hall, 
And leave your laden wains in stall. 

" Leave your white horse to squire and groom, 
And come to sup in the daïs-room : 



48 THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMENOE. 

" To sup, but first to wash, for lo ! 

E'en now the washing-horn * they blow." 

" Fullsoon, fair sir, shall my washing be made, 
When that the tribute hath been weigh'd." 

The first sack from the wains they pight- — 
(I trow 'twas corded fair and tight) — 

The first sack that they brought to scale, 
'Twas found full weight and honest tale : 

The second sack that they came to, 
The weight therein was just and true ; 

The third sack from the wains they pight — 
" How, now ! I trow this sack is light ? " 

The Intendant saw, and from his stand 
Unto the sack he raught his hand — 



'O' 



* This practice of sounding the horn for washing before dinner (corner Veaw it 
is called in old French), is still kept up at the Temple. 



THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMENOE. 49 

He raught his hand the cords unto, 
That so their knots he might undo. 

" From off the sack thy hand refrain ; 
My sword shall cut the knot in twain ! " 

The word had scantly pass'd his teeth, 

When flash'd his bright sword from the sheath — 

Through the Frank's neck the falchion went, 
Sheer by his shoulders as he bent ; 

It cleft the flesh and bones in twain, 
And eke the links o' one balance-chain : 

Into the scale the head plump'd straight, 
And there, I trow, was honest weight ! 

Loud through the town the cry did go : 
" Hands on the slayer ! Ho ! Haro ! " 

He gallops forth out through the night ; 
" Ho ! torches, torches — on his flight ! " 



50 THE EVIL TRIBUTE OF NOMÉNOE. 

" Light up, light up ! as best ye may, 
The night is black, and frore the way. 

" But ere ye catch me, sore I fear, 

The shoes from off your feet you'll wear — 

" The shoes of the gilded blue cordwain ; * 
For your scales — you'll ne'er need them again. 

" Your scales of gold you will need no more, 
To weigh the stones of the Breton shore ! 

To war ! " 

* ' ' Cordwain : " leather of Cordova — " Cordovan." Hence our " Cordwainer. 



BRAN, 



[A great battle is recorded in history as having been fougbt in tbe tenth century 
near Kerloân, a village on the coast of Leon, between the Norsemen and the Bretons 
under Ewen the Great. The Normans were driven to their ships, but carried off some 
prisoners ; among them the hero of this ballad, Bran, the grandson of a still greater 
chieftain of the same name, often mentioned in tbe Breton chronicles. Near Kerloiin 
there is still a hamlet called after him, Kervran, or Brans hold. 

Many of the circumstances of the ballad — the disguise of tbe messenger, the 
tokens, the black and white sails (an incident as old as the Hellenic Theseus-legend) — 
are to be found in the Romance of Tristan and Ysolde, the author of which avows 
more tban once his obligations to Breton popular song. M. de la Villemarque calls 
attention to the use of tbe harp, here mentioned, as that instrument, still surviving 
in "Wales, and till lately popular in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, has long 
been unknown in Brittany.] 



ORE wounded lies the good knight Bran 
On the foughten field of Kerloân. 



On Kerloân field, hard by the shore, 
Lieth the grandson of Bran-Vor. 




Maugre our Bretons won the day, 
He's bound and o'er sea borne away. 



52 BEAN. 

Borne over sea, shut up, alone, 

In donjon-tower he made his moan. 

" My kin they shout for joy, but I, 
Sore wounded, on my bed must lie. 

" Oh where shall I find a post to bear 
A letter unto my mother dear ? " 

A post has been found, and in this wise ran 
The orders of the good knight Bran — 

" Now busk thee, busk thee in masquing weed, 
A beggar's gown were safe at need. 

" And take this signet ring o' me, 
This ring of gold, for a token to be. 

" To the land of Leon when thou shalt fare, 
This ring to my lady mother bear. 

" And if she come with my ransom-fee, 
Hoist a white flag, that I may see. 



BRAN. 53 



" And if she come not, dule and woe ! 
Hoist a black flag, that I may know." 



II. 



When the messenger came to the land of Leon, 
The noble dame to supper had gone. 

To supper was set, with her kinsmen all, — 
The merry minstrels, they harp'd in hall. 

" Fair fall thee, noble chat elan, 

I bring this ring from thy fair son Bran. 

" His ring of gold, and a letter thereon, — 
Behoves you read it, and read anon." 

" My merry minstrels, your harping give o'er, 
With a heavy grief my heart is sore. 

" No time for harping is this, God wot ; 
My son lies bound, and I knew it not. 



54 BRAN. 

" To-night make me a good ship yare, 
That to-morrow I over sea may fare." 



III. 



The morrow morn, from off his bed, 

The good knight Bran to his warder said — 

" Warder, warder, look out and see 
Is there no ship upon the sea ? " 

" Now nay, Sir Knight, nought never see I, 
But it be the great sea and the sky." 

The good knight Bran, at mid of day, 
Again to the warder he 'gan say — 

" Warder, warder, look out and see, 
Is there no ship upon the sea ? " 

" Now nay, Sir Knight, I see nought, I trow, 
But the sea-mews flying to and fro." 



BRAX. 55 

The good knight Bran, at the set of day, 
Again to the warder he 'gan say — 

" Warder, warder, look out and see, 
Is there no ship upon the sea ? " 

Outspake the warder, full of guile — 
And smiled on him a cruel smile — 

" A ship I see, far, far away, 

And the winds about it lash the spray." 

" What flag ? what flag blows out to sight ? — 
Is't of the black ? is't of the white ? " 

" Sir Knight, if rightly I discern, 

'Tis black, — I swear by the brands that burn." 

The woeful knight, when this he heard, 
Thereafter never uttered word. 

He turned his pale face to the wall, 
And shivered as they that in fever fall. 



56 BEAN. 



IV. 



The lady, as ever she leaped to land, 
Bespoke the townsfolk upon the strand ; 

" What here has happ'd ? what means this thing, 
That thus I hear the church-bells ring ? " 

An aged man, that the ladye heard, 
Made answer straight upon the word — 

" One we had here in hold, a knight, 
Is dead, so late as yesternight." 

Scarce spoke were the words of that old man, 
Distraught to the tower the ladye ran. 

Oh ! fast flowed her tears, as fast she flew, 
With her thin white hairs all loose that blew, 

That the townsfolk marvelled much to see . 
An aged ladye, of high degree, 



BR AX. 5? 

A stranger ladye, in wail and woe, 

And mourning, through their streets to go, 

That each bespoke other, as by she ran, 
" What ladye is this ? what kith and clan ?" 

To the high tower foot when she won her way, 
The porter the weeping dame 'gan pray. 

" Draw bolt, draw bar, and let me in — 
My son, my son ! that to him I win ! " 

He hath drawn the bar, and the bolt hath sprung : 
On her son's dead body herself she flung. 

And in her arms she clasped him amain, 
And from that embrace never rose again. 



V. 

On the battle-field of Kerloan, 

There grows a tree looks o'er the Ian' ; 



58 BRAN. 

There grows an oak in the place of stour * 
Where the Saxons fled from Ewen-Vor. 

Upon this oak, when the moon shines bright, 
The birds they gather from the night. 

Sea-mews, pied black and white are there, 
On every forehead a bloodspeck clear. 

With them a corbie, ash-grey for eld, 

And a young crow *f* aye at her side beheld. 

Wayworn seem the twain, with wings that dreep, 
As birds that flight o'er sea must keep. 

So sweetly sing these birds, and clear, 
The great sea stills its waves to hear, 

And aye their songs one burden hold, 

All save the young crow's and the corbie's old. 

* " Battle" — frequent in our old ballads. 

t "Bran," in all the Breton dialects, means a crow. 



BRAN. 59 



And this is ever the crow's sore cry, 
u Sing, little birds, sing merrily. 

" Sing, birds o' the land, in merry strain, 
You died not far from your own Bretayne.' 



THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT. 

(BOSEN ELLIANT.) 

[A large proportion of the ballads still sung in the gatherings of the Breton 
peasantry — at the "pardon" of the patron saint, the festivities of the wedding, or 
the consecration of the new threshing-floor — relate to historical events of remote 
antiquity. One of these time-worn, but deeply-stamped pieces of old bardic coinage, 
now come down to exclusive circulation among hard peasant-hands, but still precious 
for the quality of its true poetic metal, and venerable for its ancient mint-mark, is 
the ballad of " The Plague of Elliant," of which the following is as literal a version, I 
think, as can be made from the Breton into the English. I have preserved the metre 
of the original, so that my version may be sung to the Breton air of the " Bosen 
Elliant." The plague which the ballad commemorates ravaged Brittany in the sixth 
century. The Book of Llandaff (in Jesus College, Oxford) contains an account of this 
plague, in an abridgment of the life of Saint Gwenolé, made in the ninth century by 
Gurdestin, abbot of the convent. In this account special mention is made of the 
ravages of the plague in the parish of Elliant, though the country immediately round 
about it is said to have been preserved from the scourge by the prayers of a saintly 
hermit named Rasian. He is mentioned in the ballad, which, like all other ballads 
in M. de la Villemarque's " Barsaz Breiz"" (from which my translation was made), 
was taken down from oral recitation of the Breton peasantiy.] 



"WIXT Faoüet and Llangolan 
There lives a bard, a holy man- 
His name is Father Rasian. 




62 THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT. 

On Faoüet his hest he laid : 

" Let every month a mass be said, 

And bells be rung, and prayers be read." 

Tn Elliant the plague is o'er, 
But not till it had raged full sore : 
It slew seven thousand and five score. 

Death unto Elliant hath gone down, 
No living soul is in the -town — - 
No living soul but two alone. 

A crone of sixty years is one, 
The other is her only son. 

" The Plague," quoth she, " is on our door-sill ; 
'Twill enter if it be God's will ; 
But till it enter bide we still." 

Through Elliant's streets who wills to go, 
Everywhere will find grass to mow — 

Everywhere, save in two wheel-ruts bare, 
Where the wheels of the dead-cart wont to fare. 






THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT. 65 

His heart were flint that had not wept, 
Through Elliant's grass-grown streets who stept, 

To see eighteen carts, each with its load — 
Eighteen at the graveyard, eighteen on the road. 

Nine children of one house there were 
Whom one dead-cart to the grave did bear : 
Their mother 'twixt the shafts did fare. 

The father, whistling, walk'd behind, 
With a careless step and a mazy mind. 

The mother shriek'd and call'd on God, 
Crush'd, soul and body, beneath her load. 

" God, help me bury my children nine, 
And I vow thee a cord of the wax so fine : 

" A cord of the wax so long and fine, 

To cfo thrice round the church and thrice round the shrine. 



66 THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT. 

" Nine sons I had ; I bare them all ; 

Now Death has ta'en them, great and small. 

" Hath ta'en them all from my own door stone 
None left, e'en to give me to drink — not one ! " 

The churchyard to the walls brims o'er, 
The church is full to the steps of the door : 
They must bless fields, if they'd bury more. 

There grows an oak by the churchyard wall, 
From the top bough hangs a white grave pall- 
The Plague hath taken one and all ! 



THE RETURN FEOM SAXON-LAND, 

(DISTRO EUZ A VRO-ZAOZ.) 



[It is, at first blush, difficult to believe that a ballad of the date of the Conquest 
of England by William the Norman, and describing an episode in the life of one of the 
young Breton warriors who followed Brian and Alan, the two sons of Eudes of 
Brittany, to the muster of Duke William's array, should have survived to our own 
time. Yet such is the conclusion, not of M. de la Yillemarque only — who may be 
thought prejudiced by his strong national feelings as an Armorican — but of the grave 
historian Augustin Thierry, who, in his history of the Conquest, quotes this ballad as 
a contemporary composition. M. de la Villemarque took it down from the mouth 
of Katel Road, a peasant woman of Nizon, in Cornouaille. The "wedding lace" 
referred to in the sixth quatrain was the emblematic tricoloured riband (white for 
innocence, rose-coloured for the beauty and hopes of the bride, black for the grief of 
her rejected lovers) which, in old times, it was the fashion for the Dislcared — the 
chief of the discarded suitors — to fasten round the waist of the bride before she left 
her home for the altar. In return, he could claim a kiss. This riband was pre- 
served, with the rest of the wedding paraphernalia, in the bride's chest, and was only 
brought out on occasions of high ceremonial. It was, says M. de la Yillemarque, as 
if by this act the rival tied the knot of wedded faith between his lost love and her 
husband, and it was the bride's duty to keep the riband till it was laid in her coffin. 
In the ballad a mother uses it, at once as a token of identity and a proof of the 
intensity of her maternal love, to tie about the neck of the carrier-pigeon her letter 
to her long-absent son.] 



^^^WIXT the parish Pouldergat and the parish 
Plouare, 
A menye of brave gentlemen are gathered in 
array, 




68 THE RETURN FROM SAXON-LAND. 

Bonne to march under the order of our Dutchess her fair son ; 
From Brittany's four corners much folk to them has gone. 

They are boune unto the war, over sea, in Saxon-land : 
I have my son Silvèstik, whom they look for on the strand : 
I have my son Silvèstik, and save him I have none, 
And he is of the menye that with our knight has gone. 

One night I could not sleep, as I lay my bed upon : 

I heard the maids of Kerlaz a singing of my son : 

Up in my bed I started, and made my heavy moan, 

" Lord God I my son Silvèstik, where art thou now, my own ? 

" Perchance thou mayst be more than three hundred leagues 

away, 
Or hast been flung in the great sea, unto the fish a prey : 
Hadst thou stayed with thy father, hadst thou stayed, my son, 

with me, 
In troth-plight fast ere this, it had been well with thee. 

" Troth-plighted long ere this, and wedded thou hast been, 
To Mannaïk of Pouldergat, the fairest on the green ; 



THE RETURN FROM SAXON-LAND. 6'J 

Thou hadst been here amongst us, with thy children at thy 

knee, 
Waking the glad noise through the house that sounds where 

children be. 

" A pretty pigeon, small and white, by my doorstead broodetli 

still, 
In the hollow of the rock she broods, the rock that crowns the 

hill; 
A letter I will write, to her neck I'll tie it on, 
With my wedding-lace I'll tie it, and he'll come back, my son. 

" Now lift thee, pretty pigeon, on thy wings, for love of me, 
And let them bear thee many a mile across the weltering sea ; 
Let them bear thee many a mile over the salt sea foam, 
To learn if my dear son yet lives, and bring me tidings home. 

" Wilt thou fly unto the host, where they fight across the sea, 
That thou mayst bring back tidings of my poor son to me ? " 
" 'Tis mother's pigeon, in the wood by our door that used to 

coo ; 
I see its wings that sweep the waves the galley-mast unto." 



70 THE RETURN FROM SAXON-LAND. 

" I greet you fair, Silvèstik ; this letter from your home 
Your mother sends it to you, by me, across the foam." 
" In three years and a day, fair bird, if so it may betide, 
Say I'll be at my father's hearth and by my mother's side." 

Two years passed slowly over ; three years did waste and wane ; 
" Now fare thee well, Silvèstik, I shall ne'er see thee again ! 
Oh ! if I found thy poor small bones tossed up upon the shore, 
Oh ! tenderly I'd gather them, and kiss them o'er and o'er." 

The words were hardly spoken, when a galley of Bretayne, 
Rent and riv'n from prow to tafrail, came driving o'er the main ; 
With never a helm to guide her, oars gone, and shattered mast, 
Upon the rocks — a masterless and battered hull — was cast, 

Full-freighted with dead bodies ; none knows or e'er will know 
How long that ship of death had been driving to and fro ; 
And there among the dead men, stiff and stark, Silvèstik lies, 
But parent's hand nor sweetheart's in love had closed his eyes ! 



THE CEUSADEK'S WIFE, 

(GREG AR CHROAZOUR.) 



[Faoùet is a village about two leagues from Quimperle, the Lords of which 
were a younger branch of the ancient Breton family of Goulenn. The Crusade here 
referred to, must have been the first of 1096, as the Breton Crusaders are described 
as wearing the red cross. In the later ones each nation bore the cross of its own 
colour, black being that of Brittany. The Breton Crusaders were really absent five 
years, and not seven.] 



iNTO our Lord his war I'm bound, the call brooks 
no delay — 
Where shall I give my gentle dame in charge 
while I'm away ? " 
" Give her to me, fair brother-in-law, an if it please you well, 
In bower, among my maidens, with seemly state to dwell. 

" In bower, with fair attendance, among my maidens all, 

Or, if it better please her, beside my dame in hall, 

In the same vessels for them both my cooks shall dress the 

meat, 
And at the self-same board with them she shall sit down to eat.'' 




72 the crusader's wife. 

And soon a stately sight it was that youthful dame to see, 

In the castle-court of Faoùet, among the gentilrie, 

Each a red cross on his shoulder, with great horse and pen- 

noncel, 
To gather for the Holy War with the lord that loved her well. 

He had not ridden many a mile beyond the castle wall, 
When sullen speech and scornful that dame must brook in hall. 
" Do off thy robe of grain, and don a peasant's gown of gray, 
And up, and out to tend the sheep, lest on the heath they 
stray." 

" Gramèrcy, gentle brother, what evil have I done ? 

How shall I tend the sheep that in my life tent never none ? " 

" If sheep thou never tended, 'tis time that thou begin, 

Or with my lance right sharply I'll lesson thee therein." 

For the space of seven long years she wept, a mournful thing, 

At the end of seven long years she set herself to sing, 

When a young knight, from the Holy War that homeward 

chanced to ride, 
He heard a sweet voice singing upon the mountain side. 



THE CRUSADERS WIFE. 75 

" Light down, light down, my little page, and hold my bridle- 
rein, 
Up yonder, on the hill-side, I hear a silver strain, — 
A little voice like silver upon the hill I hear, 
The last time that I heard that voice was this day seven year. 

" Good morning, pretty maiden, well have you dined to-day, 

That here, upon the hill-side, you sing so glad and gay?" 

" Oh ! yes, fair sir, I well have dined, now thanks to God 

therefor, 
All with a sweet dry crust of bread, out here upon the moor." 

" Now tell me, pretty maiden, who guard'st the silly sheep, 
If I may find a lodging in yonder castle keep ? " 
" Yes, of a sooth, good gentleman, within that castle hall 
You'll find fair lodging for yourself, and for your steed a stall. 

" And soft and warm the feather bed spread for your rest will 

be, 
Such as I had in days gone by, when a husband cared for me. 
'Twas not in fold, among the sheep, that then I slept for need ; 
I ate not then from out the trough wherein the dogs do feed." 



76 the crusader's wife. 

" But tell me, tell me, pretty one, where now thy lord may be, 
For methinks upon thy finger a wedding ring I see." 
" Unto the Holy War, sweet sir, went this dear lord of mine, 
Oh ! long and fair his golden hair hung down, as fair as thine." 

" If long and fair hung down his hair, like mine, look well on 

me, 
If I am not thy very lord, that went away from thee." 
" Oh, yes ! oh, yes ! and I'm your love, your wedded wife am I, 
The lady of Faouet I was called in days gone by." 

" Now leave thy sheep, my gentle love, upon the hills to stray, 
And ride we to the manor ; my wrath brooks no delay." 
" Now welcome, gentle brother, now welcome frank and fair." 
iS How goes it with my lady, that I trusted to thy care % " 

" Sit, brother, sit ; brave rid'st thou back that brave didst ride 

away : 
Thy lady, with the castle dames, hath ridden to Quimperle, 
To Quimperle they rode this morn, for a wedding-feast is there ; 
When they come back, thou' It find thy dame all blithe and 

debonair." 



77 



" Thou liest in thy throat, foul thief ; in beggar-maid's array 
Thou sent'st her forth to tend the sheep, lest on the hill they 

stray. 
By thy two eyes, thou liest, for thy lady she is here — 
E'en now, behind the portal, her sobs are in thine ear ! 

" Hence, thy foul shame to bury ! accursed mote thou be ! 

Thy heart is full of evil, and steeped in feloniè. 

Were not this house my father's house, wherein my mother 

died, 
Thy blood were reeking on the blade that hangs against my 

side!" 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

(KLOAREK ROHAN.) 

[Jehanne de Rohan, daughter of Alan, sixth vicomte, married, in 1236, 
Mathieu, Lord of Beauvais, son of Rene, Constable of Naples. She is the heroine 
of the following ballad; her husband's compound title being translated into its 
Breton equivalents — Traon (valley) and ioli (fair). Three years after the marriage, 
Duke Pierre Mauclerc took the cross, and was followed by many Breton Lords. 
There was a truce between the Saracens and the Lords of this crusade in 1241, 
when most of the knights re-embarked at Joppa. This corresponds with the duration 
given to the Lord's absence in the ballad. It is also proved by a record in the 
Ecclesiastical Records of Nantes, that Mathieu de Beauvais was summoned by the 
Bishup of Nantes in the same year to appear before the Archbishop of Bourges — 

" Siipev inquisitione excessuum." 

Whether these " excesses" were the murder of his clerk-cousin and his wife, as 
recorded in the ballad, is not known.] 

FYTTE I. 



$ff> N the house of Rohan is a maiden fair, 

(No daughter besides her mother bare), 
Twelve years have passed o'er her gentle head, 
Ere she hath given her will to wed. 




80 THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

Ere she hath consented, as maidens use, 
From knights and barons a mate to choose- 
From barons and knights that made resort 
To offer this lovely ladye court. 

She looked at all, but her heart would stay 

On none save only the Baron Mahé, 

The lord of the castle of Traon-joli, 

A powerful peer of Italie — 

He only her heart could win and wear, 

So loyal he was, and so debonair. 

Three years, and half a year beside, 
They passed in happy wedding-tide, 
When came the tidings, near and far, 
How Eastwards gathered the Holy War. 

" As noblest of blood I first am boune 
To take the Cross against Mahoune ; 
So since no other choice may be, 
Fair cousin, I trust my wife to thee. 
I trust my wife, and my baby dear, 
Good clerk, see no ill comes them near." 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 81 

As morning broke — on his war-horse stout, 
Armed at all points, he was riding out, 
When lo, there came his ladye fair 
Adown the steps of the castle-stair. 

Her babe in her lily arms she bore, 

And oh, but I ween her sobs were sore, 

As anigh her husband's side she drew 

And clung his armed knee unto — 

And as she clung, she wept amain 

That the tears they flecked the steel like rain. 

" My honey lord, for God's dear grace, 
Leave not your wife in lonely case ! " 
Her lord, sore moved, reached down his hand, 
Where by his side she kept her stand. 

And lovingly lifted her, louting low, 
And set her down on his saddle-bow, 
And there he held her a little space, 
And gently he kissed her pale sweet face ; 
" My Jannedik, darling, but dry thy tear, 
Thou'lt see me again, before the year." 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

With that he took his little child 

From off the lap of the ladye mild ; 

Between his arms the babe he took, 

And he fixed on its face such a loving look — 

" How say'st, my son ? When tall and stout 

With thy father wili't ride to battle out ? " 

As he rode forth from his castle-hold, 

There was weeping and wail from young and old 

From young and old came sob and cry, 

But the clerk — he looked with a tearless eye. 

FYTTE II. 

The days they went, and the days they came, 
When the felon clerk bespake his dame, 
" The year hath drawn unto its close, 
And so mote the war, I well suppose ; 
The war hath come to its end, perdy, 
Yet comes not thy lord to his castle and thee. 

" Now answer, sweet sister and ladye mine, 
What whispers that little heart of thine ? 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 83 

Holds still the fashion for ladyes to stay 
Sad widows, whose lords live far away ? " 

" Now peace, vile clerk — thy heart within 
Is full, to running o'er, with sin — 
Had he been here, who calls me wife, 
'Twere pity of thee both limb and life." 

When the clerk this heard, with an evil look 

To the kennel his secret way he took, 

And he hath ta'en his lord's best hound, 

And his throat he hath severed, round and round. 

He hath caught of the thick blood — hath caught of the thin, 
And he hath written a letter therein ; 
Hath 'written and sent to the Lord Mahé, 
Where far in the East he at leaguer lay. 

And thus it ran, in the good hound's blood — 
" Thy ladye, dear lord, is sad of mood. 
Sweet ladye, she is sorry of cheer, 
For an ill-hap late befallen here ; 



84 THE CLERK OF ROHAN, 

To the green-wood she went to hunt the roe, 
And your good dun hound is dead, I trow." 

The Lord Mahé read the letter through, 
And this was the answer he sent thereto : 
(C Bid my sweet ladye smooth her brow — 
Of the red red gold we have store enow. 

" What if my dun hound dead should be ? 
When I come I'll buy as good as he — 
But say in the green-wood 'twere pity she ride, 
For hunters are gamesome, and ill might betide." 

FYTTE III. 

A second time, to the gentle dame, 
This felon clerk by stealth he came : 
" Fair ladye, your beauty will fade away, 
Thus weeping ever both night and day." 

" Oh, little I reck of beauty and blee, 
When my own true lord is away from me." 
" If that your lord bide away from you, 
'Tis that he's slain, or hath wed anew. 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 85 

" In the land of the East there are ladies fair, 
And eke with dowers both rich and rare — 
In the land of the East are swords and strife, 
And many a good knight leaves his life. 

" Beshrew hirn, an if new wife he has wed ; 
Forget him, an if he be stricken dead." 
" I'll die if he be wedded again : 
I'll die if that he hath been slain." 

" Who flings in the fire a casket of cost, 
Because the key thereof is lost ? 
Far better, I ween, is a new new key, 
Than ever the olden one mote be." 

" Now avaunt, foul clerk, thine evil tongue 
With lewdness and leasing is canker-clung.' ' 
The clerk he heard with an evil look, 
To the stable his secret way he took. 

There he was ware of his lord's destrier 
The fairest steed in the country near — 



86 THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

As smooth as an egg, and as white as curd, 

Fiery, and free of step as a bird ; 

That never meaner forage had seen 

Than the crushed broom boughs, and the buckwheat green. 

He hath aimed — he hath thrust, and his dagger hath gone 
To the haft behind the broad breast-bone. 
He hath caught of the thick blood — hath caught of the thin, 
And he hath written this letter therein : 

" An ill-hap hath befallen here — 

Let not my lord make angry cheer- — 

From a merry night-feast as my dame rode back, 

Hind leg and fore your best horse brake." 

Oh, dark was the Baron's eye that read : 
" Ill-hap, indeed ! my destrier dead ! 
My dun hound gone, and my choicest steed ! 
Clerk-cousin — advise her to better heed ! 

" Bid her — but gently — not chiding her sore — 
To such night-feasts that she go no more. 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 87 

Not horses alone such junkets undo — 
But marriages may be marred there, too." 

FYTTE IV. 

The days they went, the days they came, 
When the felon-clerk bespoke the dame — 
" Or give me my will, or ware my knife, 
For I therewith will have thy life." 

" A thousand deaths I'd rather win, 
Than anger my God with mortal sin." 
The clerk such answer he mote not brook, 
So fierce a wrath his spirit shook. 

His dagger forth the sheath he drew — 
And he launched it at her straight and true — 
But the ladye's white angel turned his hand, 
And the dagger-point in the wall did stand. 

And the ladye scatheless to flight hath ta en, 
And hath barred her door with bolt and chain — 



88 THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

But the clerk his knife from the wall plucked out, 
As mad as a dog in the summer drought. 

And down the castle stairs so wide, 
Two steps to a bound, and three steps to a stride, 
And to the nurse-chamber his way doth keep, 
Where the babe was sleeping its quiet sleep. 

The little babe lay all alone, 
One arm outside the cradle thrown — 
One little rosy arm outspread, 
The other folded beneath its head. 

The little heart all bare to the blow— 

***** 

Oh, mother, that weeping henceforth must go ! 

Again the clerk hath clomb the stair, 
And in black and red hath written fair, 
And fast and flyingly went his pen — 
" Quick, quick, dear lord, ride home again. 

" Hide home, as fast as fast may be, 
Here's need that order were ta'en by thee. 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 89 

Your hound is dead, and your white horse lost, 
But 'tis not this that grieves me most. 

" What's hound that's gone, or steed that's sped ? 
Oh, and alas ! your babe is dead ! 

" The big sow hath eaten your baby bright, 
The while my ladye was dancing light 
With the miller — a gentle gallant is he — 
In your garden he's planting a red rose-tree." 

FYTTE V. 

This letter it came to the Lord Mahé, 
As home from the war he hath ta'en his way, 
As his happy homeward way he hath ta'en 
A march to the merry trumpets' strain. 

The while he read the letter o'er, 

His mood it kindled more and more, 

Till when he had finish'd the clerkly scroll, 

In his hands he crumpled the parchment roll. 



90 THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

And he tore it in pieces with his teeth, 
And he trode it his horse's feet beneath — 
" To Brittany — ho ! fast — fast as ye may — 
I'll drive my lance through him would delay." 

Fast, fast, he rode to his castle yett 
And struck three strokes on the oaken gate — 
Three strokes he struck so loud and clear, 
That all in the castle astert to hear. 

The felon clerk, as the strokes he heard, 
He ran to open with never a word — 
" Clerk-cousin, accursed mote thou be ! 
Did I not trust my wife to thee ? " 

In his open mouth he hath driven his spear, 

That out at his neck the point came clear ; 

And hath sprung up the stair so fierce and fast, 

And into his ladye's bower hath past — 

And or e'er she spake word — that ladye true, — 

With his sword he hath stabb'd her through and through. 



THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 9 1 

FYTTE VI. 

" Now tell me, Sir Priest, if told it may be, 
What sight in the castle did ye see \ " 
" I have seen a sight of woe, I ween, 
That sadder ne'er in the world was seen — 
A saint slain all for her love and truth, 
And her slayer well nigh dead for ruth." 

" Now tell me, Sir Priest, if told it may he, 

What sight at the cross-roads did ye see ? " 

" I saw a carrion corpse flung bare 

To the beasts of the field and the birds of the air." 

" And what did ye see in the churchyard green, 
By the light of the moon and the starlight keen ? " 
" I saw a fair ladye, in white yclad, 
And she sat on a grave that was newly made. 

" With a baby clasp'd her breast unto, 
His little heart stabbed through and through ; 
A dun deer-hound on her right did stand, 
And a snow-white steed on the other hand. 



92 THE CLERK OF ROHAN. 

" The throat of that hound it gaspeth wide, 
There's a red red wound in that horse's side ; 
And they reach out their muzzles, lithe and light, 
And they lick her hands so soft and white. 

" And she strokes good hound and good horse the while, 
And smiles on both with a tender smile ; 
And then the babe — as jealous he were — 
He strokes the cheek of his mother fair. 

" This sight I saw till set the moon, 
And I saw but the mirk about and abo'on ; 
But I heard the clear sweet nightingale ring 
The song that in Heaven the angels sing." 



BAEON JAUIOZ. 



[Louis, Baron of Jauïoz, in Languedoe, is an historical personage. Ho came to 
Brittany in the train of the Due de Berry, his suzerain, when that nobleman with 
the famous Du Gruesclin and the Dukes of Bourbon and Burgundy were sent thither 
by King Charles V. to drive out the English (1378). He fought also against the 
English bands in Flanders, and is recorded among the knights taking part in the 
leaguers and combats of Bombourg, Ypres, Cassel, and Gravelines. He afterwards 
embarked for the Holy Land at Aigues-Mortes. His purchase and abduction of a 
young Breton maiden, who dies of grief, is traditional. M. de la Villemarque 
obtained the ballad from the Breton lexicographer, Legonidec] 




S I was washing, the stream hard by, 
Sudden I heard the death-bird's * cry. 



" Wot you, Tina, the stoiy goes, 
You are sold to the Lord of Jauïoz ? " 

" Is't true, dear mother, the thing I'm told ? 
Is't true that to Lord Jau'ioz I'm sold ? " 



* A little grey finch, with a plaintive note, common in the winter on the heaths 
of Brittany, so called by the peasants. 



94 BARON JAUÏOZ. 

" My poor little darling, nought I know, — 
Go, ask your father if this be so." 

" Father, dear father, say is it true 
That Lord Jauïoz I am sold unto ? " 

" My darling daughter, nought I know, 
Go, ask your brother if it be so." 

" Lannick, my brother, oh, tell me, pray ! 
Am I sold to that Lord the people say ? " 

" You are sold to that Lord the people say, 
You must up and ride without delay ; 

" You must up and ride to his castle straight, 
For your price has been paid by tale and weight 

" Fifty crowns of the silver white, 

And as many crowns of the gold so bright." 

" Now tell me, tell me, mother dear, 
What clothes is't fitting I should wear ? 



BARON JAUÏOZ. 95 

" My gown of grain, or of grey, shan't be, 
That my sister Helen made for me ? 

" My gown of grain, or my gown of white, 
And my bodice of samite so jimp and tight ? " 

" Busk thee, busk thee, as likes thee best, 
Small matter, my child, how thou art drest. 

" A bonny black horse is tied at the gate, 

And there till the fall o' the night he'll wait,- — 

" Till the fall o' the night that horse will stay, 
All fairly saddled to bear thee away." 



II. 



Short space had she rode when the bells of St. Anne, — 
Her own church bells — to ring began. 



Then sore she wept, as she sat in selle : 
" Farewell, Oh sweet St. Anne, farewell ! 



96 BAEON JAUÏOZ. 

" Farewell dear bells of my own countrie, 

Dear bells of the church I no more shall see ! " 

As on she rode by the lake of Pain, 

'Twas there she saw of ghosts a train, — 

A train of ghosts all robed in white, 

That in tiny boats on the lake shone bright, — 

A crowd of ghosts — that all for dread 
Her teeth they chatter'd in her head. 

As on she rode through the valley of Blood * 
The ghosts stream'd after like a flood ; 

Her heart it was so sad and sore, 

That she closed her eyes to see no more ; 

Her heart it was so full of woe, 

That she fell in swoon as she did so. 

* The lake of Pain and the valley of Blood will recall to readers who know the 
ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, the weird scenery he traverses with the Queen of 
Faery. In Celtic mythology they are stages on the road from this world to the next. 




Ii! 



SIIP / ; ■/■ 






RARON JAUIOZ. 90 



III. 



" Now, draw anigh, and take a seat, 
Until 'tis time to cro to meat." 



o 



The Baron he sat in the ingle-place, 
And black as a raven was his face ; 

His beard and hair were white as snow ; 
Like lighted brands his eyes did glow. 

" I see — I see a maiden here, 

That I have sought this many a year. 

" My bonny May, wilt come with me, 
One after one my treasures to see ; 

" From room to room to see my store, 
And count my gold and silver o'er ? " 

" Oh, better I'd bruik with my minnie to be, 
Counting faggots with her, than gold with thee. 

LOFC. 



100 BARON JATJÏOZ. 

" Come down to the cellar, ladye mine, 

To drink with me of the honey-sweet wine." 

" Sooner I'd stoop to the croft-pool brink, 
Where my father's horses go to drink." 

" Come with me from shop to shop, my fair, 
To buy a mantle of state so rare." 

" Oh, better I'd bmik a sackcloth shift, 
An 'twere my mother's make and gift." 

"Ye'li come with me to the wardrobe straight, 
For a trimming to trim your robe of state." 

" Better I'd bruik the white lace plain, 
That my sister made me, my own Elaine." 

" May mine — May mine — if your words be true, 
It's little love I shall have of you ! 

" I would that blister'd had been my tongue, 
Ere my fool's head ran on a leman young — 



BARON JAUÏOZ. 101 

" Ere my fool's hand wasted the good red gold, 
For a maiden that will not be consoled." 



IV. 



" Dear little birds, I pray you fair, 
To hear my words, high up in air ; 

" You go to my village, and you are glad, 
I may not go, and I am sad. 

" The friends that are in my own countrie, 
When you shall see them greet from me, — 

" Oh ! greet the good mother that me bare, 

And the sire that rear'd me with love and care,- 

" Oh ! greet from me my mother true : 
The old priest that baptised me too ; — 

" Oh, bid them all farewell from me, 
And give my brother my pardon free." 



102 BARON JAUÏOZ. 



V. 

Two months or three had pass'd away, 
All warm abed the household lay, — 

All warm abed, and sleeping light 
Upon the middle of the night. 

No sound without, no sound within, 

When a gentle voice at the door came in : 

" My father, my mother, for God's dear sake, 
Due prayer for me the priest gar make. 

" And pray you, too, and mourning wear, 
For your daughter lies upon her bier." 






THE GOSS-HAWK. 

(AR FALC'HOX.) 






[This spirited ballad is the popular record of a peasants' war which broke out in 
Brittany a. d. 1008. Tradition ascribes the outburst to the oppression of the tax- 
gatherers charged to collect the taxes imposed by the Dowager Duchess Hedwig, wife 
of Duke Geoffrey the First. On his return from a pilgrimage to Rome the Duke was 
killed by a peasant woman, one of whose hens had been struck down by his falcon. 
She flung a stone at the offending bird, and brained the Duke by the same blow. 
This song is still sung in the Black Mountains of Cornouaille, where M. de la Yille- 
marque picked it up from a wooden-shoe maker of Koatskiriou.] 



^^~X HE Count's hawk killed the gude wife's hen, 
^—ïrpy' For quits the gude wife the Count hath slain, 
vfcW For blood o' the Count, the land's in thrall, 



Poor folk driven like beasts of stall, 



Trod under foot by robber-bands, 
Renders and reivers from Gaulish lands, 
Renders and reivers, that pike and pull 
At the call of our Dame, as cow calls bull. 



104* THE GOSS-HAWK. 

Weary of waste, for bare need bold, 

The young have risen, risen the old, 

For the blood of a hawk and a hen, no mo, — 

Bretayne is blood and fire and wo. 

In the Black Hills, on the eve of St. John, 
Met round the beal-fire thirty-and-one. 
And Kado-Gann * i' the midst was he, 
Leant on his fork of iron and tree. 

" Say, porridge-eaters,! how shall it be ? 
Will ye buckle to tax and fee ? 
My mother's son, not a doit he'll pay, 
' Bet' hang than starve/ is Kado's say." 

" Never a sol will I pay, I swear ; 

My cattle are clemmed, my bairns go bare. 

I swear the blazing brands upon ; 

So help me Saint Kado and Saint John ! 

" A broken man they have made o' me, 
They've eaten me out of farm and fee : 

* Kado the fighter. f ll Potred-iod," eaters of boiled buckwheat. 



THE GOSS-HAWK. , 105 



Or ever I see the fall o' the year, 
A beggar's bags I'll be fain to wear." 



" With a beggar's bags you shall not go, 
At my back you shall march, with many mo — 
Of fighting and feud, if that's their will, 
Or ere day dawn they shall have their fill ! 

" Ere dawn they shall have both feud and fight, 
We swear by the sea and the lightning's light, 
We swear by the stars and by the moon, 
By the earth alow and the sky aboon." 

Up he hath hent a blazing brand, 
And every man took fire in hand, 
" It's up and away, my merry men all, 
Fast and first on Kerâran * fall." 

His wife marched by him, the troop before, 
And on her shoulder a graipe t she bore, 

* The Breton name for Guerrande. 

T " Chrog," a three-pointed digger for rooting up potatoes, &c, so called in 
the North. 



106 THE GOSS-HAWK. 

And aye she sung, as she strode along — 

" Up, lads, and out, — stout hearts and strong ! 

" It's not a beggar's bags to wear, 
That twice fifteen man-bairns I bare : 
It's not to carry the wood to ha', 
Oh no, nor yet the stone to draw : 

" Not to bear burdens like beasts of stall, 
Did I, their mother, bear them all : 
Nor yet to tread out the gorse, I weet, 
The prickly gorse with their naked feet : 

" Nor the lord's destriers to graithe and groom, 
Nor to keep hounds fat and hawks in plume, 
But the wrong to quit, and the right restore, 
For this my thirty bairns I bore ! " 

From beal-flre unto beal-fire along, 
The steep up-mountain paths they throng ; 
To the blare of sheep-horn and battle-cry, 
And " to fire with the taxing varletry ! " 



THE GOSS-HAWK. 107 

When from the hills to the plain they bore, 
They were three thousand and five- score ; 
But ere to Langoad they did bear, 
They were nine thousand, counted fair. 

And when they came to Keraran, 

They were thirty thousand, every man, 

Thirty thousand and fifteen-score, 

When Kado bade " halt ! we march no more." 

He scarce had spoken the word well out, 
When the gorse was piled, from the lands about, 
Twelve-score loads round the wall there stood, 
That the flames they leaped as they were wud. 

A flame so fierce, a flame so fast, 

That iron forks, as in forge, it brast ; 

And the bones of them that in it fell, 

They cracked like the bones of the damned in hell. 

And the taxing varlets they roared i' the night, 
Like wolves in a pit-fall, for rage and fright, 



108 THE GOSS-HAWK. 

And when the sun, i' the morn, did daw, 
A heap of ashes was all he saw. 



THE FOSTER-BROTHEB. 

(AR BREUR-MAGER.) 



[The legend of the love-tryst, made in life, but kept after death, by a ghostly 
lover on a spectral steed, who bears off the maiden behind him to the other world, 
is common to the old ballad literature of Germany, Denmark, Modern Greece, and 
Servia. Burger's Leonora, a modernisation of the old German ballad, has given the 
story the widest literary circulation. But the most striking touches of the ghostly 
ride are to be found in the Danish Aagé et Else, as in the Breton. 

The relation of foster-brother- or sister-hood is a very binding one among all the 
branches of the Celtic race. It is still recognised as among the strongest of all ties in 
Ireland. 

This ballad is interesting for its allusions to the Breton ceremonials of wedding 
and burial, including the sending round of the grave-digger with his bell to announce 
the news of death — in the words still used — "Pray for the soul that was . . . ." 
such a knight, gentleman, or labourer. The ' ' lyke- wake, " or watching and feasting 
by the dead the night before burial (though the word is Saxon, and the practice pre- 
vailed also among the Teutonic race, in our island at least), is also eminently a Celtic 



The end of the ghostly ride, in the Breton — unlike that in Burger's adaptation 
of the old German legend — is Heaven, not Hell. The lovers reach the Celtic Island 
of the Blest — that happy isle of Avalon — (the apple garden) where, conducted thither 
by the bards Taliesin and Merlin, in the green shadow of the fruit-laden trees, 
Arthur and his good knights repose and recover of their sore wounds got in the battle 
of Camlaun. 

Procopius * records how the fishermen dwelling on the coast of Gaul, opposite 
Britain, at midnight hear at their doors a knocking without hands. On going down 
to the shore they find weird barques with no visible freights, but so heavily laden that 



* De Bello Gothico, lib. iv. c. xx. 



110 



THE FOSTER-BROTHER 



they caa scarcely swim, their gunwales rising barely an inch above the water. These 
barques are laden with souls, whom it is the duty of these fishermen to row over to 
the opposite shore. An hour suffices for their passage with these freights of souls, 
though with their own boats a night is hardly enough for it. ] 




FYTTE I. 

F all the maids of gentle blood that are in this 
countrie, 
Was none so fair as Gwendoline, scant eighteen 
years had she : 
Dead was the ancient lord her sire, mother, and sisters twain : 
But for her step-mother, alack ! the maiden went her lane. 

'Twas pity still to see her weeping salt salt tears and sair, 
On the threshold of the manor, she that was so douce and fair, 
For her foster-brother's good ship looking ever o'er the foam, 
Her only living comfort, longing sore for it to come ; 
For her foster-brother's good ship, looking wistful out to sea, 
Six years had sped them slowly since he left his own countrie. 



" Out of my sight and void the gate, go gather in the kine ; 
Tis not to sit with folded hands I gar thee drink and dine :" 



THE FOSTER-BROTHER. Ill 

Two hours and three before the day she must rise up at her call, 
In winter-tide to light the fire, and sweep both bower and hall. 
And up and out for water to the Dwarf's Spring must she fare ; 
In mended crock must draw it, and in leaky pail must bear. 

'Twas mirk mirk night and the water bright troubled and 

drumlie flowed 
With the horse-hoofs of an armed knight, — seemed that from 

Nantes he rode. 
"Fair fall thee, gentle maiden : in troth-plight art thou tied ?" 
And she that sely was and young, " I know not, sir," replied. 
"Art thou troth-plighted, maiden? I pray thee, answer plain." 
"Now save thy grace, fair gentleman, no troth-plight have I 

ta'en." 

" Then show thy step-mother this ring, and tell her, to a knight 
Who came from Nantes-wards riding, that thou thy troth hast 

plight. 
In Nantes a sore fight hath been fought — his young squire lieth 

low, 
And deep and wide in the knight's own side a red sword-wound 

doth show. 



112 THE FOSTER-BROTHER. 

"Natheless in three weeks and three days well cured that 

knight will be, 
And will ride unto the manor, frcck and fast, in quest o' thee." 
Home fast she ran, and on her hand she looked at the ring 

o' gold : 
It was her foster-brother's ring her finger held in hold. 

FYTTE II. 

One week had sped, two weeks had fled, two weeks and one beside, 

And never to the manor-gate saw she that knight to ride. 

Then up and spake her step-dame — " Daughter, behoves thee 
wed: 

Counsel I've ta'en and found the man will best beseem thy 

bed." 

"Saving your grace, good step-mother, husband me liketh 

nane, 
But an it were my foster-brother, that hath come back again. 
He hath given me his ring of gold, my wedding ring to be, 
And freck and fast, ere the week is past, he'll come in quest 

of me." 



THE FOSTER-BROTHER. 113 

" Peace, silly thing, with thy wedding ring ! Speak me no 

speeches fine : 
Or a hazel-wand I'll take in hand, to tame that tongue o' thine ! 
Will thee or nill thee, busk thee straight, for thy bride-bed 

prepare, 
With Jobig Al-loadek, my groom so young and fair !" 

"With Jobig! Heaven forefend — so my bride-bed were my 

bier! 
Mother, my own sweet mother — would God that thou wert 

here !" 
" Out to the yard, my dainty dame, there weep and hang thy 

head ; 
Maugre thy puling and thy prayers, in three days look to wed ! " 

FYTTE III. 

It is the ancient grave-digger, he goeth up and down, 
Ringing his bell, to tell the tale of death, by tower and town. 
"Pray for the soul, that was a knight, and did true knightly 

part, 
While he was in the body, pure of soul and stout of heart. 

Q 



114 THE FOSTER-BROTHER. 

" He hath been wounded deep and sore with a sword-stroke in 

the side, 
Out over Nantes, of that sore stroke in foughten field he died. 
To-morrow with the set of sun his lyke-wake will be dight, 
And from the white church to the grave he'll be borne at 

morning light," 

FYTTE IV. 

" You are early from the wedding." " Early ? Yes, and in good 

tide ; 
But the feast it is not over, nor the bedding of the bride. 
I may not hold for very ruth, nor that sorry sight forget, 
To see the lurdane neat-herd by that gentle maiden set. 

" Around that hapless maiden, who wept for bitter woe, 
No eye of all but tears let fall — the priest he wept also : 
All wept that to the altar of our church this morning came — 
Young eyes and old were weeping — all but that sore step-dame ! 

"The more the merry minstrels from the church-door played 

and sung, 
The more they strove to cheer her, the more her heart was wrung. 



THE FOSTEK-BROTHEK. 1 1 5 

They have set her on the dais, at the top place of the board ; 
She nor bite of bread hath broken, nor drop of water poured. 

"And when they had unlaced her, twixt the bride-bed sheets 

to lay, 
She hath torn the bride-ring from her hand, her bride-lace 

flung away : 
And she hath fled out in the night, wild with dishevelled hair ; 
She hath fled forth to hide herself, and ne'er a one knows 

where." 



FYTTE V, 

The lights were out : in bower and hall all slept, both old and 

young- 
All save that rueful maid, that watched and wandered, fever- 
clung. 
" Who's there?" " 'Tis I, my Nola ;* thy foster-brother's here." 
"'Tis thou, in sooth? Thy very self? 'Tis thou, my brother 
dear!" 

* Short for Gwennola — the Breton form of Gwendoline. 



116 THE F0STER-B110THER. 

Forth she hath sprung, and closely clung on the croup of the 

white destrier, 
Her little arm clasped round him, behind her brother dear. 
" How fast we ride, good brother ! five score good leagues and 

more ! 
How happy I feel near thee, as I never felt before ! 

" Is't still far off, thy mother's house 1 Fain, fain I would be 
there." 

" Now clasp me close, sweet sister ; we have not long to fare." 

The howlets hooted and flew on before them as they rade ; 

The wild things of the forest from those horse-hoofs fled dis- 
mayed. 

" Thy good steed gallops bravely, thine armour glinteth sheen ; 

I find thee taller than of old and fairer too, I ween : 

Taller and fairer than of old : say, is thy manor near ?" 

" Now clasp me close, sweet sister ; e'en now we shall be there." 

" There is a chill about thy heart, a chill upon thy hand : 
Thou'rt cold, my brother ; — in thy hair I feel the death-damps 

stand." 



THE FOSTER-BROTHER. 117 

" Now clasp me close, sweet sister : to my manor we are come. 
Hearst not the wedding minstrels that with music bid us 
home ?" 

The words were barely spoken, sudden the horse stopped still, 
Shivered from crest to pastern, and neighed both loud and shrill. 
It was a pleasant island, and all upon the strand, 
Young men and gracious maidens danced, seemly, hand in hand. 

Around them green trees grew about, set thick with apples red, 
And behind, the sun up-rising lighted the mountain's head. 
In the midst a streamlet sparkled along its thin bright track, 
Whereof souls that had y-drunken straightway to life came back. 

There was Gwendoline's good mother, there were her sisters 

twain, 
And all was glee and gladness, cry of joy, and merry strain. 

FYTTE VI. 

From the white church to the grave-yard when the sun arose 

next morn 
The maiden corse of Gwendoline by maiden-hands was borne. 



THE NIGHTINGALE. 

(ANN EOSTIK.) 



[Thi3 ballad, or one on the same subject, was certainly popular before the 
middle of the thirteenth century, when Marie of France — the first Anglo-Norman 
poetess— translated it among her "Lais," giving it the name it still bears. She 
spins out the story to many times the length of the Breton, to the sad weakening of 
the dramatic power and simplicity of the ballad : but Marie has a sweetness of her 
own, with a love of nature, and a freshness of feeling, which recall our own Chaucer, 
who no doubt knew and loved her Lais. How much in his spirit is the following 
(I modernize the spelling) from her Lai of the nightiugale :— 

" Longuement se sont entr'aimes, 
Tant q\ie ce vint â un été, 
Que bois et prés sont reverdis, 
Et les vergers furent fleuris, 
Et les oiselets par grande douceur 
Mènent leur joie ensum* les fleurs." 

We may be proud to claim Marie of France — for all her addition — for our Anglo- 
Norman, not the French, Parnassus. She lived and wrote in the reign of Henry III., 
in England, probably among the Breton families planted in Yorkshire by Alan of 
Brittany, to whom William gave forty-two manors in that county, which afterwards 
formed the duchy of Richmond.] 



SSl^lSf} HE young wife of Saint Malo hath gone 

To her hio'h bower window to make her moan. 



'£ 



r/c\W " Out and alack ! My heart is sore 

My nightingale will sing no more." 



"Ensemble" "Amongst. 



120 THE NIGHTINGALE. 

" Tell me, young wife, that yestreen I wed, 
Why rise ye so often from your bed I 
So often, when sleeping you should be, 
At the mid o' the night, from the side o' me ? 
With head uncoifed, and naked feet — 
Thy reason for rising tell me, sweet." 

" Dear husband, if I rise so light 
Out of my bed, at mid o' the night, 
'Tis that at my window it lists me so 
To see the good ships pass to and fro." 

" 'Tis never for ship that sailed, I ween, 
That so oft at your bower window ye're seen. 
'Tis never for ship that swam the sea, 
Nor yet for two, nor yet for three. 
'Tis no more to see the ships go by, 
Than the lady moon and the stars to spy. 
Now rede me, rede me, my bonny bride, 
Why every night ye leave my side ? " 

" I rise at the cradle side to peep, 
To see my little son in 's sleep." 



THE NIGHTINGALE. 121 

H A babe — a sleeping babe to see ? 
'Tis no more for that than for ship on sea. 
Jape me no japes, no tales tell me ! 
Speak sooth, for sooth I will have o' thee." 

" Now fume not, nor fret, my kind old man, 

I'll tell thee truth, as truth I can. 

I hear a nightingale every night ; 

In the garden he sings on a rose-tree white : 

A nightingale every night I hear, 

He sings so sweet, he sings so clear, 

So clear, so sweet, so true doth trill, 

Each night, each night, when the sea is still." 

The old man when this tale he heard, 

He thought the more that he spoke no word : 

When the old man heard what the young wife said, 

He vowed a vow in his old grey head — 

" Or speak she false, or speak she true, 

This nightingale I will undo." 

To the garden, at morn, he his way hath ta'en, 
And bespoken the gardener, fast and fain. 



122 THE NIGHTINGALE. 

" Now lythe and listen, good gardenere, 
There is a thing mislikes me here. 
In my garden-close is a nightingale, 
That for singing all night will not fail, 
For singing all night, till dawn of day, 
That I sleep no snatch, do what I may. 
If ta'en to-night that nightingale be, 
A good gold penny I'll pay to thee." 

The gardener into the garden hath gone, 
And a sely springe he hath set anon. 
And a nightingale he hath caught therein, 
And ta'en to his lord, his gold penny to win. 
The lord, when in hand he held the bird, 
With a cruel laughter his heart was stirred ; 
Its pretty neck he has wrenched and wrung, 
And the bird in his wife's white apron flung. 

" Hae here, hae here, young wife o' mine, 

Thy nightingale that sang sae fine ; 

It is for thee I have had it ta'en : 

Nae doubt, sweet May, ye'll to see it be fain." 



THE NIGHTINGALE. 123 

Her bachelor, when this hap he heard, 
He sighed and he spoke a heavy word : 

" Now are we springed, my sweet and me, 

No more each other o' nights we'll see, 

No more speak lovingly and low, 

As we wont, in the moonlight, at her window !" 



"THE BATTLE OF THE THIETY." 

(STOUKM ANK TKEGONT.) 



[The following rough, but spirited Breton ballad — still sung at Breton festivals 
under its national name — is the popular account of one of the most gallant episodes 
of the intestine war between the rival houses of De Montfort and Blois, which ravaged 
Brittany from 1341 to 1364. There can be little doubt that it is contemporaneous 
with the incident it describes. Froissart has told the same story in one of the supple- 
mental chapters of his Chronicle discovered by M. Buchon among the MSS. of the 
Prince de Soubise, and published by him in 1824. A lax by a northern trouvère on 
the same subject was discovered by M. de Fréminville, in the Bibliotheque du Eoi, 
and printed by him in 1819, and again more correctly in 1827, by M. Crapelet. 

This lai has been vigorously translated by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,* with an 
introduction in which all the particulars of the combat, and its literary records, will 
be found. 

In explanation of the grounds of this Battle of the Thirty, it should be stated 
that the cause of De Montfort was supported by the English under a leader called by 
the Chroniclers " Bennbourc," "Bembrough," and "Brandebourg." The Breton 
equivalent PennbrocJc, "Badger-head," points rather to "Pembroke" as the true 
version of the name. De Blois was the chief of the national Breton party. The 
thirty Breton champions in this combat were headed by Robert de Beaumanoir, the 
brother in arms of the Great Du Guesclin. His family adopted their motto, " Beau- 
manoir, bois Ion sang," from the incident recorded in the ballad. De Beaumanoir 
had first challenged Pembroke to a single combat, or to a joust of two or three of his 
men-at-arms, against the like number of Bretons. Pembroke declined a single joust, 
as "a trial of fortune without result," but offered, with twenty or thirty of his 
fellowship, to meet the like number^of De Beaumanoir's followers. Froissart describes 
the combat as one â V out ranee on foot, though the ballad-maker makes De Beau- 
manoir tell his men to "go at the horses with their bills." Horses, however, were 



The Combat of the Thirty. " Chapman and Hall, London. 1859. 



126 " THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY." 



used, in fact, at least by the Breton De Montauban, who is said to have decided the 
action in favour of his party by riding down the English in the mêlée, at a critical 
moment. 

The scene of the combat was on a heath, near an oak tree, at a spot called 
Mi voie, as being " half-way" between the Castle of Ploermel, held by Pembroke and 
the English for De Blois, and that of Josselin, garrisoned by De Beaumanoir and his 
Bretons for De Montfort. The oak tree was felled in the wars of the League, and its 
place was long marked by a cross. This was thrown down at the Revolution, but the 
site has since been marked by an obelisk, with an inscription recording the combat. 

The action was fought on the vigil of Mid-Lent, Sunday, corresponding to 
March 27th. 1351 (new style). 

The ballad, of which I offer a literal, and all but line for line, translation, in 
the metre of the original, was taken down, from the recitation of a peasant, by 
M. de la Villemarque.j 



I.— THE MAKCH* WINDS AND THE SAXON FOEMEN. 




ARCH, with his winds, so fierce and frore, 
Hammers and batters at the door. 
Forests are brattling, earthwards blown, 
Hail-storms are rattling the roofs upon. 



But not from hammers of March alone 
Angry assault our roofs have known ; 
Tis not alone the hail puts to proof 
Toughness of rafter and stoutness of roof ; — 

* The combat took place in March. One can imagine the contemporary bard 
seizing the idea of the inclement winds and rains of this stormy month as the best 
parallel to the violence and devastation of the English garrisons. 



" THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY." 1 29 

'Tis not alone the hail and the rain, 
Beating the roof-tree, drowning the plain : — 
Hail and rain, and winds that blow, 
What are these to the Saxon foe % 

II.— THE PEAYEE OF THE THIETY TO ST. KADO.* 

" Blessed Saint Kado, that guard'st our land, 
Strengthen us now in heart and hand ; 
Grant that to-day, by aid from thee, 
Brittany's foes may conquered be. 

" If from the fight we e'er come back, 
Golden baldric thou shalt not lack — 
With sword and hauberk of gold thereto, 
And mantle, to boot, of the welkin's blue. 

" All shall say, when thine image they see, 

Bless we Saint Kado on bended knee. 

Up in high heaven, or here upon earth, 

Where is the Saint that can mate him- for worth 1 " 

* St. Kado is our St. Chad. 



130 " THE BATTLE OF THE THIETY.' ; 



III.— THE BATTLE OP THE THIRTY. 

" Now count them, young squire, now count them for me, 
And say what the tale of these knights may be." 
" By one, two, and three I have counted them o'er— 
There are knights fifteen, and as many more." 

" If they are thirty, why so are we — 

Upon them, gallants, right merrilié ! 

Let your bills on their horses be lustily laid : 

No more shall they eat our buckwheat in blade." 

Oh, heavy and hard were the blows that brast — 
Not hammer on anvil falls more fast : 
And fiercely and full ran the red, red blood, 
As fierce and as full as a stream in flood. 

And ragged and rent was their harness fair, 
As the tattered rags of a beggar's wear ; 
And loud was the roar of the hot mêlée, 
As the voice the great sea lifts alway. 



"THE BATTLE OF THE THIKTY.' 1 131 



IY.— THE PEOWESS OF TINTÉNIAC. 

Cried the Badger-head * to Tinténiac, 
While he bore down fast as the driving rack, 
* Try a thrust of my lance, Tinténiac — and see 
If a truncheon of hollow reed it be." 

" One thing, fair sir, shall be hollow anon, 
And that is the head thy shoulders upon, 
Where the corbies and crows will gather, fain 
To pike and to pull at marrow and brain." 

The words, I wis, were scarce spoke out, 
Tinténiac hath swung his mace about, 
And skull and helm and hood of mail 
Hath smashed in one, as you'd smash a snail. 

Keranrais laughed the blow to behold — 
A laugh to make men's blood run cold— 
" Were these stout Saxons all as thou, 
Full soon they'd conquer our land, I trow ! " 

* "Pembroke," from the Breton Penn, head ; brock, badger. 



132 ' THE BATTLE OF THE THIKTY.' 

" How many, sir squire, are left on the green ? " 
" The blood and the dust they blind my een." 
" How many, sir squire, are left on the plain ? " 
" There are seven will never lift lance again." 

V,— THE THIEST OF BEAUMANOIE. 

Till the stroke of noon from the dawn of day 
They fought, nor giving nor gaining way ; 
From the stroke of noon till the fall of night 
Against the Saxons they held the fight. 

" I'm athirst, sore athirst ! " Lord Robert * he cried ; 
But Ar-Choad -f* flung back this word of pride 
As you give back a sword-thrust sharp and sore — 
" If thou'rt athirst, friend, drink thy gore." 

When that sharp speech Lord Robert he heard, 
He turned for shame, and he spake no word, 
But he stormed like a fire on the Saxon foe, 
And five stout knights on the sward laid low. 

De Beaumanoir. 
t Ar-Choad means "of the wood" in the Breton. He is the Du Bois men- 
tioned in the lai. 



"THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY." 133 

" Now count, sir squire, and tell to me, 
How many Saxons yet left may be \ " 
" My lord, I have told, and told them again, 
By one, two, and three — but six remain." 

" If six are left, they shall live their day, 
But ransom, I trow, each man must pay — 
A hundred pieces so bright and broad, 
Wherewith to lighten the land's sore load." 



VI.— THE EETUEN TO CASTLE-JOSSELLN. 

No true son of Bretayne were he 
That in Josselin street had not crowed for glee, 
As those good knights marched back from stour, 
In every basnet a bright broom-flower — 

Of the Breton no friend, I wis, were he, 
Nor yet of the Saints of Brittanie, 
Who had robbed Saint Kado of tribute due, 
As patron of Breton knights so true — 



134 "THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY." 

Who had not rejoiced and his bonnet flung, 
Who had not giv'n thanks, and this orison sung — 
" Up in high heaven, or here, upon earth, 
Lives not the Saint mates Saint Kado for worth ! " 



JEAN 0' THE FLAME. 

(JANNEDIK FLAMM.) 

[The heroine of this ballad (which M. de la Yillemarque took down from the 
recitation of a wandering blind beggar, Ghiillarm Arfoll, the same who sang to him 
the "Battle of the Thirty") is Jeanne of Flanders, the gallant wife of Jean de 
Montfort, the head of the Anglo-Norman (and at that moment also the Breton) party, 
whose struggle with the French faction under De Blois made Brittany the scene of 
incessant warfare for many years, about the middle of the fourteenth century. When 
Jean de Montfort, taken prisoner in Nantes, was carried off to Paris, his wife — 
"Qui bien," says Froissart, "avoit courage d'homme, et cceur de lion" — raised his 
fallen banner, and, like Maria Theresa in later times, presented herself, with her 
infant son in her arms, at Rennes, before the assembled barons, knights, and men-at- 
arms of the De Montfort following, and said to them : "Ha, seigneurs, be not dis- 
comforted nor dismayed for my lord whom we have lost. He was but one man. See 
here my little son, who shall restore him if it please God, and do you much good. 
I have means enow, whereof I will give freely, and promise you such a captain and 
guardian as shall mightily comfort you all." It was at the siege of Hennebont 
("Qui était forte ville et grosse, et fort chastel"), into which she threw herself, that 
she fired the camp of Charles de Blois, as recorded in the ballad. This was in 
1342. Froissart tells the story in his admirably vivid way in the 185th chapter of 
his "Chronicles."] 



136 



JEAN O' THE FLAME. 




-HAT is't that climbs the mountain's brow ?" 
" A flock of black wethers, as I trow." 
" No flock of black wethers, nor yet of grey — 
A menye of men-at-arms, I say — 

Of men-at-arms from the land o' the Gaul * 

To lay a leaguer to Henbont Wall." 



H. 



As our Dutchess rode Henbont streets about, 
Oh, leal and loud the bells rang out ; 
On her milk-white palfrey, bright o' blee, 
Holding her babe upon her knee ; 
Nowhere she turned her bridle-rein, 
But the Henbont folk shouted amain : 
" God have mother and babe in grace, 
And bring the Gaul to desperate case." 

* As usual in the Breton ballads, the French are " Challaoued " — or *'Vro- 
Chall" — Gauls ; the English, "Saoz," or Saxon. 



JEAX O' THE FLAME. 137 

The Dutchess had ridden so blithely by, 
When from the Gauls there came a cry : 
"Where lies the quarry the harbourers know, 
We've slotted down both Fawn and Doe. 
When Doe and Fawn alive we hold, 
To bind them we've brought a chain of gold" 

Down from the edge of the bartizan 
Spake Jean o' the Flame, as 'twere a man : 
" The Doe shall go safe and the Fawn fare free, 
And the quarry a felon Wolf* shall be ! 
Lest he shiver and shake for all his hair,- 
This very night we'll warm his lair." 

Oh ! an angry woman was Jean o' the Flame 

As down the bartizan stair she came : 

She hath donned a steel hauberk, breast and back, 

And laced on her hair a basnet black ; 

She hath ta'en a sharp sword into her hand, 

And hath chosen three hundred for a band ; 



* The Breton "6Z«2," wolf, led to that animal being taken as the symbol of 
De Blois and his party. 



138 JEAN O' THE FLAME. 

And a red brand from the fire hath pight, 
And out at a postern, through the night, 

III. 

The Gauls sang gay, the Gauls sang fine, 
Set at the board drinking the wine. 
In their pavilions close and tight, 
The Gauls sang late into the night ; 
But their singing stinted, far and nigh, 
When an eldritch voice was heard to cry : 

" More than one mouth that laughs to-night, 
Shall cry before the morning-light. 

"More than one jaw that the white bread holds, 
Shall take in its teeth the cold black moulds. 

" More than one that red wine doth pour, 
Shall soon be pouring out fat gore. 

" More than one that boasts freck and free, 
Ere morn a heap of ashes shall be." 



JEAN O' THE FLAME. 139 

There was many a Gaul that sat fordrunk, 
With heavy head on the board y-sunk, 
When through the tents an alarum past — 
" The fire ! the fire ! To rescue fast ! 

" The fire ! the fire ! Fly one ! fly all ! 

'Tis Jean o' the Flame, from Henbont Wall 1" 

Jean o' the Flame, I will go bound, 

Is the wightest woman that e'er trod ground. 

Was never a corner, far or near, 

Of the Gaulish camp but the fire was there. 

And the wind it broadened, the wind it blew, 

Till it lit the black night through and through. 

Where tents had been stood ash-heaps grey, 

And roasted therein the Gauls they lay. 

Burnt to ashes were thousands three, 

Only a hundred 'scaped scot free ! 



IV. 



Oh ! a merry woman was Jean o' the Flame, 
When at morn to her bower-window she came, 



140 JEAN O' THE FLAME. 

To see the plain all black and bare, 

Grey ashes for pavilions fair ; 

And wreaths of smoke that curl and creep, 

Up out of every small ash-heap. 

Jean o' the Flame with a smile she sware, 

" By God, was ne'er field burnt* so fair ! 

" Ne'er saw I field to such profit bren ; 
Where we had one ear we'll have ten !" 

Still true the ancient saw is found, 
" Nothing like Gauls' bones for the ground ; 
Gauls' bones, beat small as small may be, 
To make the wheat grow lustilie." 

* " Pebcz maradek" — literally, " what a manuring by paring and burning. 



DU GUESCLIN'S VASSAL. 

(GWAZ AOTKOU GWESKLEN.) 

[Bertrand du Guesclin (1314 — 1380), Constable of France, born of an ancient 
Breton family, and one of the noblest preux chevaliers of whom the history of 
chivalry preserves record, is still a popular hero of Breton ballad and legend. This 
ballad tells the traditional tale of his razing of the Castle of Pestivien, one of the 
holds occupied by the English in the struggle of parties under De Blois and De 
Montfort.] 



~N the thick of Mael woods stands a stately castle-keep, 
With a turret at each corner, and a moat both wide 




and deep ; 

In the great court is a well, where piled the bones of 
dead men lie, 
And every night that bone-heap grows higher and more high. 

On the windlass of that draw-well the corbies settle free, 

And o'er their carrion-feast below — oh ! but they croak merrilie. 



142 DU guesclin's vassal. 

That draw-bridge falleth lightly, but rises lightlier still ; 
Whoso lists therein may enter, but goes not out who will. 

II. 

A young squire through the Saxon pale on chevauchie* did fare, 

Iann Pontorson he was hight, a gentle squire and fair : 

And as he rode at evenfall this stately castle by, 

He asked of the chief warder leave therein that night to lie. 

" Light down, light down, Sir Squire ; for thee I'll let the draw- 
bridge fall. 

Now lead thy red-roan courser in, and stable him in stall ; 

There he shall eat his fill o' the hay and of the barley fine, 

Whilst you in hall, with our merry men all, shall sit you down 
to dine." 

He is set at board, but never a word spake any there, I ween ; 
Nor knight, nor squire, nor man-at-arms — dumb men they might 
have been — 



* No reader of Froissart can have forgotten the chevaucliies or ridings out in 
quest of gallant adventures of arms, which give such an individual life and interest 
to his " Chronicles." 



DU guesclin's vassal. 143 

But 'twere a word to the maiden : " Biganna, mount the stair, 
And see that for this stranger squire the bed be dighted yare." 

When meat was done and boards were drawn, and the time for 

bed was come, 
The gentle squire he clomb the stair into an upper room ; 
And blithe sang Iann Pontorson for his bed as he was boune, 
And he set his horn of ivory on the bed-stock adown. 

" Biganna, pretty sister, now say what this may be, 

That ever ye sigh so heavilie as ye turn your looks on me ?" 

" Oh ! if ye stood but where I stand, and knew the thing I 

know, 
It's you would sigh, as you look'd on me, as heavily, I trow. — 

" It's you would sigh as heavily, for very ruth, I ween : 

Under the pillow at your bed-head there's a dagger bright and 

keen. 
On blade and haft there's blood still left, that's not had time to 

dry : 
'Tis the third man's blood that it has shed, and you must be 

fourth to die. 



144 du guesclin's vassal. 

" Your gold and eke your white monie, your arms, and all your 

gear, 
But an it be your red-roan horse, are ta'en and lock-fast here." 
Under the pillow at his bed-head lightly his hand he laid, 
And hath found the dagger with the blood still wet on haft and 

blade. 

" Biganna, my sweet sister, now help me to win free, 

And thou shalt have five hundred crowns all for a ransom-fee." 

" Gramercy, sir ; an asking I would ask, and only one : 

It is — have you a wedded wife at home, or have you none ?" 

" False answer to thy asking will I none, betide what may ; 
A wedded wife I've had at home this two weeks and a day. 
But I have three brothers, every one a better man than me : 
For pleasure of thy heart choose one of them thy groom to be." 

" For my heart there is no pleasure in man's love nor yet in fee ; 
There is no pleasure for my heart, but only, sir, in thee. 
Follow me out, and never doubt but the draw-bridge we shall 

clear : 
The porter will not stay us ; he's my foster-brother dear." 



DU guesclin's vassal. 145 

Featly and fast the gate they've past, out o'er the bridge 

they've gone. 
" Now up and ride, sweet sister, on the croup of my red roan. 
The way lies free to Gwengamp : to my good Lord I'll go, 
To ask if he hold dearly by his vassal's life or no : 
Now ride we straight to Gwengamp, to my true Lord Gwesklen, 
That he come and lay a leaguer about Pestivien." 



III. 

" Fair greeting, men of Gwengamp, all for your courtesie, 
I seek my good Lord Gwesklen ; I pray you, where is he ? " 
"If you seek the good Lord Gwesklen, as so I read your 

call, 
In the square-tower you'll find him, set in the Barons' Hall." 

Oh ! lightly Ian Pontorson within the hall has stept, 

And straight to the Lord Gwesklen his forward way hath 

kept : 
" The grace of God be with my Lord, and shield him from all 

harm, 
Even as to shield his vassals my Lord holds out his arm." 



H6 Dü guesclin's vassal. 

" The grace of God be with thee, that speak'st so courteouslie, 
He whom God shields to others at need a shield should be. 
What need is thine? Short speech and sooth is that which 

likes me best." 
" Needs one to harry Pestien — that bloody robbers' nest. 

" Tis thence the Saxon reivers on foray sally out, 

Is never herd nor homestead safe for seven good leagues 

about : 
And whoso enters Pestien Gate an ill death he must dree ; 
But an it were this maiden, they had made an end o' me. 

" I trow they had slit my weasand, as they've slit many a score," 
And he up and out with the dagger that still was red with 

gore. 
Then outspake Gwesklen : " By the saints that Bretons have in 

awe, 
So long as lives one Saxon, will be neither peace nor law ! 
Now graith* my great horse, trusty squires, and do my armour 

on, 
And let us see if this mote last ! " And so Gwesklen was gone. 

* Arm. 



DU guesclin's vassal. 147 

IV. 

The Captain of Pestivien to the donjon tower he ran, 

And at Lord Gwesklen japed his jape, down from the bartizan : 

w Oh ! is't to dance a dance you've come, you and your merry 

men, 
That all so bravely harnessed ye seek Pestivien \ " 

" On a dancing-errand, Saxon, we are come, by my fay : 

But 'tis we will pipe, and you shall dance, and eke the pipers 

pay. 
We'll gar you dance so loath and long that you'll pray the dance 

were done ; 
And when we're tired of piping, there's the foul fiend shall 

pipe on ! " 

The first stroke that Lord Gwesklen struck, the walls to ground 

were thrown, 
That the strong castle shrunk and shook to its foundation-stone. 
The second stroke Lord Gwesklen struck, three towers were 

lying low, 
And twice a hundred men went down, and well as many mo. 



148 du guesclin's vassal. 

The third stroke that Lord Gwesklen struck, the gates were 

beaten in, 
And the Bretons they were masters, walls without and courts 

within. 

They've fired the hold, they've burnt the mould, and slockened* 

it in blood ; 
The ploughman sings as he ploughs o'er the ground where 

Pestien stood : 
John the Saxon, felon traitor and rank reiver though he be, 
LoDg as the rocks of Mael shall stand shall ne'er hold Brittanie ! 

* Quenched, 






THE WEDDING-GIBDLE. 

(SEIZEN EURED.) 

[The Breton expedition into Wales to which this ballad refers was undertaken 
under Jean de Bieuk, or De Bieux, Marshal of Brittany (in 1405), in aid of Owen 
Glendwr's rising against the English rule.] 



HAD not been betrothed but a night and eke a day, 

When at the orders of my Lord de Rieux I must 

away ; 

Must march with that bold Baron, in aid, if aid may 

be, 
Of the good Prince Owen Glendwr and the Bretons over sea. 

" Now busk and boune, my little foot-page, and run beside my 

rein : 
To say farewell to my betrothed my heart within is fain : 




150 THE WEDDING -GIRDLE. 

I must bid my betrothed farewell, the ladye I love best, 

Or well I wot my heart for grief will break within my breast." 

As he rode to her castle-wall he shook like an aspen tree ; 
As he rode through her castle-gate his heart beat heavily. 
" Now enter in, my gentle Lord, and draw the fire anigh, 
That I may spread the board anon, and feast thee daintily." 

" Saving your grace, good aunt, for me let never board be dight ; 
I come but to bid her farewell that yestreen gave me her 

plight/' 
When the good dame this heard the shoes from off her feet she 

laid, 
And gat her in her stocking-feet upon her daughter's bed. 

On the bed-stock she hath mounted, and hath bent her o'er the 
bed: 

"Awake, awake, my Loïda, lift up thy pretty head, 

And busk thee, busk thee, my bonny bairn, and lay thy night- 
rail by, 

And speak a word to thy true love, who hath come to bid good- 
bye." 



THE WEDDING-GIRDLE. 151 

Then up from between the sheets sprang the maiden all a-glow, 
And jet-black was the hair that fell on her shoulders white as 

snow. 
" Alack and woe, my leman sweet, my Loïda, woe is me, 
The time is come I must aboard and sail away from thee 

" To Saxon-land, to follow the banner of my Lord, 

And God he knows the heavy grief that in my heart I hoard." 

"Now, in God's name, my own true love, sail not away from 

me : 
The wind is ever changeful, and traitor is the sea. 

" If 'twere thine evil hap to die, think of my heavy pain : 
With hungering for news of thee my heart will break in twain. 
From fisher's hut to fisher's hut I'll pace the salt sea strand : 
What word, what word of him that hath my troth and heart 
and hand 1 " 

Oh ! sore she cried, and sore he tried to cheer her in her woe : 
" Now dry thine eyes, my Loïda, and weep not for me so : 
A girdle I will bring thee from o'er sea — a girdle fair — 
A wedding-girdle of the blue, set all with rubies rare." 



152 THE WEDDING-GIRDLE. 

'Twas a sight to see that woeful knight as he sat by the ingle- 
glow, 

His ladye-love upon his knee, her pretty head bent low, 

Her two arms twined about his neck — both silent, but for 
weeping ; 

Till the morn should rise to part them their last sad love-tryst 
keeping. 

With the first light of the morning that heavy knight 'gan 
say: 

" The red cock crows, my darling, to tell the break of day." 

" Now nay, now nay, my own true love ; trust me, 'tis night- 
time still : 

'Tis but the moon that shineth, that shineth on the hill." 

"Now nay, now nay, it is the sun through the door-chinks 

comes a-glow ; 
'Tis time that I should leave thee, across the sea to go." 
He's gone, and aye as thence he went the daws they chattered 

free : 
" An' if the sea be traitor, worse traitors women be." 



THE WEDDING-GIRDLE. 153 



On Saint John's Day, in the autumn, that maid was heard to say : 
" I saw, far out upon the waves, from the mountains of Are, 
I saw far out a gallant ship, sore beaten by the sea, 
And high upon the after-deck he stood that loveth me. 

" All in his hand he held a sword, and a sore fight there was set, 
And the dead lay thick about him, and his shirt with blood was 

wet : 
My love and life are twinned,* alack !" She made no more ado, 
But when the new-year's day came round, she had plighted 

troth anew. 

But ere long there came tidings, tidings of happy strain : 
The war, the war is over — the good knight is come again ; 
Has come again to his manor, in gladsomeness and glee, 
This night he's boune to his ladye-love, his own betrothed to see. 

As he came near the castle he heard the rotes sound clear, 
And saw i' the castle windows the lights shine far and near : 

* Separated, 



154 THE WEDDING-GIKDLE. 

" Say, merry new-year's bedesmen,* that by tower and town go 

free, 
What mirth is in yon castle ? — what means this minstrelsy ? " 

" They are the merry rote-players, a playing two and two, 

' Now room for the milk-potage -j- that the door-stead passes 

through.' 
They are the merry rote-players, a playing three and three, 
' Now room for the milk-potage in the house that enters free.' " 



IIL 



The beggars f bid to the wedding to their supper were addrest, 
When in came an errant beggar-man, was not a bidden guest : 
" Now largesse, of your courtesy, largesse of board and bed, 
The night is come, I have no home, nor place to lay my head." 



* Eginanerien, the beggars who at Christmas-time traverse the country asking 
a new-year's alms, with the cry "Eghinad d'e" ("a new-year's gift for me"), popu- 
larly contracted into EghincCné, to a corruption of which some etymologists refer the 
"Hogmanay," the new-year's cry in Scotland. 

f The popular wedding-air in Brittany. The milk-potage is the special dish of 
the new-married pair at the wedding-supper. 

% Beggars in Brittany are among the most honoured guests at weddings, funerals, 
saints' -days, and all social gatherings with anything of solemnity about them. 






THE WEDDING-GIRDLE. 155 

" Now Heaven forefend, poor beggar, but tliou should' st find a 

bed ; 
And for thee as for the others the supper-board is spread : 
Draw nigh, good man, and enter the manor, in God's name ; 
My lord and I that serve the rest, we will serve thee the 

same." 

The first dance that they danced in hall, the ladye spoke him 

fair : 
" What aileth thee, poor beggar-man, that so still thou sittest 

there?." 
" There's nothing ails me, ladye : no cause have I therefore, 
But that the way was weary, and my limbs are stiff and 

sore." 

The second dance they danced in hall, outspake the bride once 

more : 
" Art thou still weary, my good man, that thou tak'st not the 

floor?" 
" Oh, yes ! I am too weary for dancing, ladye fair : 
And 'tis not alone I am weary, but a weight at my heart I 

bear." 



156 THE WEDDING-GIRDLE. 

The third dance that they danced in hall, the bride smiled fair 

and free, 
And she came unto the beggar-man and said : " Come, dance 

with me ! " 
" It is an honour ill befits to the like o' me to pay ; 

But as 'tis offered, it were the part of a churl to say thee 

•>■> 
nay. 

And as they moved along the dance, he stooped for her to 

hear ; 
And oh ! but I ween the lips were green that whispered in her 

ear : 
"What hast thou done with the red-gold ring ye had of me, 

fair May, 
On the threshold of this chamber, was a year ago to-day ? " 

'Twas uplift eyes and hard-wrung hands, as grievously she 

cried : 
" Till now I lived without a grief, and so hoped to have died : 
I thought I was a widow, now I have husbands twain." 
" 'Twas ill-thought, my fair ladye, for husband thou hast 

nane." 



THE WEDDING-GIKDLE. 157 

He hath drawn a dagger beneath his coat that hung beside his 

knee, 
And he hath stricken a stroke at her that garred the blood to 

flee; 
That down she fell on her bended knees, and her head she hung 

aside : 
" My God ! my God ! " was all she said — and with the word she 

died. 



IV 



In Daoulaz Abbey-church stands Our Ladye carven fair, 
That a girdle set with rubies from over sea doth wear : 
Who gave that ruby girdle to Our Ladye if you'd weet, 
Ask of the monk that lieth a penitent at her feet. 



PART II. 

SONGS USED ON DOMESTIC AND 
FESTIVE OCCASIONS. 



THE FLOWEBS OF MAY. 

(BLEUNIOU MAE.) 



[In the districts of Cornouaille and about Vannes they have a pretty funeral 
fashion, of covering with flowers the biers of young girls who die in the month of 
May.* Such deaths are regarded as ominous of happiness hereafter, and sick girls 
pray to be spared till the flowers of May come back, if death seem to be darkening 
over them before the month ; or to be taken before the flowers of May are withered, 
if life and flowers are waning together. The following song on this touching theme 
is much sung in Cornouaille, and is ascribed to two peasant sisters, still living, the 
authoresses of a charming little song called "The Swallows," which will be found in 
this volume. The delicacy, tenderness, and piety of this pathetic idyll are character- 
istic of the Breton ; and these qualities are found among the peasantry of Brittany 
— rude and stern almost to gloom as they are — more than among any other class of 
the country.] 




N the sea-shore who Jeff had seen 
With rosy cheeks and eyes of sheen ; 

Who for the pardon had seen her start, 
Had felt the happier in his heart : 



* The same usage is preserved in South "Wales. M. de la Villemarque remarks 
on the tender use Shakspeare has made of it in "Cymbeline," in the speech he puts 
into the mouth of Arviragus over the body of Imogene. 



162 THE FLOWEKS OF MAY. 

But he that had seen her on her bed, 
Had tears of pity for her shed, 

To see the sweet sick maiden laid, 
Pale as a lily in summer-shade. 

To her companions she said, 
That sat beside her on her bed : 

" My friends, if loving friends ye be, 
In God's name, do not weep for me. 

" You know all living death must dree ; 
God's own self died — died on the tree." 



II. 



As I went for water to the spring 
I heard the nightingale sweetly sing : 

" The month of May is passing e'en now, 
And with it the blossom on the bough. 



THE FLOWERS OF MAY. 163 

" The happiest lot from life they bring, 
The young whom death takes in the spring. 

" Ev'n as the rose drops from the spray, 
So youth from life doth fall away. 

" Those who die ere this week is flown, 
All with fresh flowers shall be strown ; 

"And from those flowers shall soar heaven-high, 
As from the rose-cup the butterfly." 



III. 



" Jefflk ! Jeffik ! did you not hear 

The nightingale's song so sweet and clear ? 

" ' The month of May is passing e'en now, 
And with it the blossom on the bough.' " 

When this she heard, the gentle maid, 
Crosswise her two pale hands she laid : 



164 THE FLOWEKS OF MAY. 

" I will say an Ave Marie, 

Our Ladye sweet, in honour of thee : 

" That it may please our God, thy Son, 
To look with pity me upon ; 

" That grace to pass quick me be given, 
And wait for those I love in Heaven." 

The Ave Marie was hardly said, 
When gently sank her gentle head : 

The pale head sank, no more to rise ; 
The eyelids closed upon the eyes. 

Just then beyond the court-yard pale 
Was heard to sing the nightingale : 

" The happiest lot from life they bring, 
The young whom death takes in the spring. 

" Happy the young whose biers are strown 
With spring-flowers, fair and freshly blown/ 



THE ASKING OF THE BEIDE. 

(AR GOULENN.) 



[Marriage in Brittany is preceded by a whole series of regulated ceremonials, 
to which, in the district of Cornouaille especially, it is matter of religion to adhere 
with the utmost scrupulousness. When a young man thinks himself in a position to 
marry, his first recourse is to the tailor, the recognised marriage-broker of every 
Breton village. He it is who is supposed to know all the eligible partis of both 
sexes — their means, tastes, the wealth of their parents, the marriage portions, and 
"plenishing" they can respectively bring with them. When the tailor has received 
his commission to open negotiations with the selected maiden, he visits her parents' 
farm, accosts her, generally alone, and puts forward in their best light the means, 
looks, and accomplishments of his client. If these find favour in the girl's sight, he 
is referred by her to the parents. If they approve the match, the tailor formally 
assumes the functions of Bazvalan,* or "messenger of marriage," and, wearing one 
red and one violet stocking, brings the wooer, accompanied by his nearest male 
relative, to the home of his intended. 

This step is called the "asking of conference." The heads of the two families 
make acquaintance, while the lovers are left to converse apart. When they have 
wooed and whispered their fill, they join their parents hand in hand, wine and white 
bread are brought out, the young pair drink from the same glass and eat with the 
same knife, the bases of the marriage treaty are fixed, and a day is settled for the 
meeting of the two families. 

This* is called the velladen, or view, and takes place at the house of the girl. 



* From baz, a rod, and valan, the broom, in allusion to the twig of flowering 
broom which he carries as his wand of office. 



166 THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 



Everything is done by her parents, by display of their own havings — in furniture, 
linen, money, plate, provisions, stock, live and dead, implements, &c. &c. — or by 
borrowing from neighbours, to make the most imposing show of wealth. At this 
meeting of the families the conditions of the contract are finally settled. 

A week before the marriage, the young couple — he accompanied by the principal 
bridesmaid, she by the "best-man," bearing white wands— go round the neighbour- 
hood to deliver their invitations to the wedding, which is formally done in verses 
setting out time and place, and interspersed with prayers and signs of the cross. 

At last comes the wedding-day. And now the functions of the Bazvalan and 
the Breutaer, or "defender," who represents the reluctance of the bride, as the 
Bazvalan the passions of the bridegroom, assume their full importance in the sym- 
bolical scene which is transacted in the verses which follow, or in others of the same 
character, for both Bazvalan and Breutaêr may be their own poets, so that they 
adhere to the regulated course of the allegory.] 



THE MESSENGER OF MARRIAGE. 

N the name of Father, Son, 

And Holy Ghost, God, three in one, 

Blessing rest on this roof-tree, 

And more joy than I bring with me. 



THE DEFENDER. 

What has happ'd, good friend, I pray, 
To drive the joy from thy heart away ? 

THE MESSENGER. 

In my cote, my pigeon's love, 
I had a pretty little dove, 




THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 167 

When the spar-hawk, like a flame, 
Or a wind, down swooping came ; 
My little dove he scared away, 
Where she's flown to none can say. 

THE DEFENDER. 

Thou look'st mighty smart and trim 
For one whose eyes in sorrow swim : 
Thy yellow hair thou hast combed out, 
As if bound for a dancing-bout. 

THE MESSENGER. 

Now cease, good friend, thy jesting keen ; 
My little white dove say hast thou seen ? 
Merry man shall I never be 
Till again my pretty dove I see. 

THE DEFENDER. 

Of thy pigeon no news I know, 

Nor yet of thy dove as white as snow. 

THE MESSENGER. 

'Tis false, young man, the word you say ; 
The neighbours saw it fly this way : 



168 THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 

Over your court they saw it fly, 

And light in the orchard-plot hard by. 

THE DEFENDER. 

Of thy little dove as white as snow, 
Nor yet of thy pigeon, no news I know. 

THE MESSENGER. 

My pigeon he will waste away, 
If his sweet mate long from him stay ; 
My hapless pigeon he will die — 
Through the key-hole I must spy. 

THE DEFENDER. 

Hold there, friend ; thou shalt not go 
I'll look myself and let thee know. 

[He goes into the house, and returns immediately. 

In our courtyard I have been, 
Ne'er a dove there have I seen ; 
But I found great wealth of posies, 
Bloom of lilacs, flush of roses : 
Chief, a dainty little rose 
That at the hedge corner grows. 



THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 169 

I will fetch it, an you will, 
Heart and eyes with joy to fill. 

[He goes into the house again, and 
returns leading a little girl. 

THE MESSENGER. 

Pretty flowret, fair thou art, 
Fit to gladden a man's heart : 
Were my pigeon a drop of dew, 
He would sink thy breast into. 

[After a pause. 
To the loft I'll climb anon, 
Thither she perchance has flown. 

THE DEFENDER. 

Hold thee, friend, thou shalt not go : 
I'll look myself and let thee know. 

[He goes into the house, and returns 
with the good-wife. 

In the loft I've sought all round, 
But thy dove I have not found ; 
Only I have found an ear 
Left from harvest — it is here : 



170 THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 

Stick it in thy hat, if so 
Consolation thou mayst know. 

' THE MESSENGER. 

Not more grains are in the ear 
Than my dove shall nestlings bear, 
Under snowy wings and breast, 
Brooding gently, in the nest. 

[After a pause . 

To the field in search I'll go. 

THE DEFENDER. 

Nay, good friend, thou shalt not so. 
Wherefore soil thy dainty shoon ? 
I will brings thee tidings soon. 



[He enters the house, and rcivrns 
with the grandmother. 



Of your dove I saw no trace, 
Nothing found I in the place 
But this apple, wrinkled, old, 
Hid in leaves, and left on mould : 
Put it in your pocket, straight, 
Give your pigeon it to eat, 
And he'll cease to mourn his mate. 



THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 171 

THE MESSENGER. 

Thanks, good friend ; sound fruit is sound, 
Though 'tis wrinkled round and round ; 
Savour sweet with age is found. 
But for your apple nought I care, 
Nor for your flower, nor for your ear, 
All on my dove is set my mind : 
I'll go myself my dove to find ! 

THE DEFENDER. 

Foregad, but thou'rt an artful hand : 

Come in with me, nor longer stand. 

Thy little dove, she is not lost, 

I've kept her with much care and cost ; 

All in a cage of ivoriè, 

Of silver and gold its bars they be. 

There she sits, both glad and gay, 

Dainty and decked in her best array ! 

[The Messenger is admitted into the house. He 
takes his seat for a moment at table, then re- 
tires to introduce the future bridegroom. As 
soon as he appears the bride's father presents 
him with a horse-girth, which he passes round 
the bride's waist; while he is budding and un- 
buckling it, the Defender sings as follows : — 



172 THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 

THE GIETH. 

(AR GOURIZ.) 

Prancing free in the meadows green, 
An unbroke filly I have seen : 

Nothing she recked hut to prance and play 
Through the meadow the live-long day ; 

Upon the sweet spring-grass to feed, 
And drink of the streamlet in the mead. 

Sudden along the way did fare, 
A bachelor so debonair, 

So young, so shapely, of step so light, 
His clothes with gold and silver bright, 

That the filly stood all at gaze, 
And for the sight forgot to graze. 

Then slow and softly near she drew, 
And reached her neck his hand unto : 

With gentle hand he hath stroked her skin, 
And laid to her muzzle, cheek and chin ; 

And then he hath kissed her fair and free, 
And oh, but a happy filly was she ! 



THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 173 

Then in her mouth a bit he hath placed, 
And round her body a girth hath laced. 

Then lightly on her back he hath leapt, 
And away with him the filly stept ! 



This song sung, the bride- elect kneels at the feet of the oldest member of 
the family, while the poet of the occasion — often a wandering man, at once bard 
and beggar, but always treated with respect — invokes on her head all blessings of 
God, the Virgin, the Saints, and the departed of her own blood for generations back. 
The " best-woman " then raises her up, and the " defender" puts her hand in that 
of her betrothed, makes them exchange rings and swear to be as true to each other 
in this world as ring is to finger, that they may be eternally united in the next. 
He then recites aloud the Paternoster, the Ave, and the Be Profundis. Soon after 
the bride-elect, who has retired, appears again, led by the " best-man," with as many 
rows of silver lace on her sleeve as she brings thousands of francs for her portion. 
The bridegroom-elect follows with the "best-woman ;" the relations come after. The 
"messenger of marriage" brings out the bridegroom's horse and holds his stirrup 
while he mounts; the "defender" takes the bride-elect in his arms and sets her 
behind her destined husband. After them all mount and ride, at racing pace and 
often across country, to the church. The first who reaches it wins a sheep; the 
second, a bunch of ribbons. 

In some cantons, adds M. de la Villemarque, — from whom, and M. de Souvestre, 
these details are taken, — when the rector leaves the altar for the sacristy, the 
wedding party accompany him. The "best-man" carries under his arm a basket 
covered with a napkin, in which is a loaf of white bread and a bottle of wine. This 
the rector, after crossing the loaf with the knife's point, cuts and divides a morsel 
between the newly-married pair. He then pours the wine into a silver cup, from 
which the husband drinks and passes the cup to his wife. 

On leaving the church, amidst the firing of guns, the explosions of squibs and 
crackers, the shrill notes of the oiniou* and the thump and jingle of the tam- 
bourine, the procession is reformed for the bride's house, where the feast is spread. 



A rude kind of oboe. 



174 THE ASKING OF THE BRIDE. 



The rooms are hung with white sheets, and decorated with nosegays and garlands. 
Tables are spread wherever they will stand, often overflowing the house into the 
courtyard. At the end of one of them sits the bride, under an arch of flowers and 
foliage. As the guests take their seats an old man recites the Benedicite. Each 
course is ushered in with a burst of music, and followed by a dance ; and the whole 
night is often spent at table. 

The day after the marriage is " the day of the poor." The beggars and tramps 
assemble by hundreds : they consume the remains of the marriage feast, the bride 
herself waiting on the women, the bridegroom on the men. Before the second course 
the bride and bridegroom lead off the dance with the most venerable of the beggars, 
male and female ; while songs are sung in honour of the liberality of the young couple, 
in which are lavished prayers for long life, prosperity, and fair issue. 

The beggars leave the house invoking the blessing of Heaven on it and its owners. 

There is something strangely impressive to us who are taught to regard poverty 
almost as a crime, and to hold beggars as the very scum of the community, in the 
respect, almost reverence, with which these penniless and houseless outcasts are 
regarded in Brittany. Something of the same kind may be seen in Ireland. This 
courteous pity for poverty seems due, in part at least, to Celtic feelings and usages, 
though the teaching of the Rornan Catholic Church may have a good deal to do 
with it. 



THE SONG OF THE JUNE FEAST. 

(AR MIZ EVEN.) 



[This is one of the most ancient Breton festivals — evidently a relic of the 
Druidic ceremonies of the summer solstice. It is now rare, being confined, says 
M. de la Villemarque, to some cantons of Vannes and a few villages of Cornouaille. 

The villagers of both sexes gather at some dolmen, or Druid stone, every 
Saturday of June at four in the afternoon. Each year's festival has a "Master" 
(parron, patron) selected among the handsomest and most agile of the youth, who 
chooses a maiden as queen of the day by placing on her finger a silver ring. His 
badge of office is a knot of ribbons, blue, green, and white, which at the end of the 
festival he transmits, with his dignity, by fastening it to the button-hole of the 
successor whom he is empowered to appoint. 

The song which follows is the consecrated dialogue between the last year's 
master and mistress, and the address of the new master to the mistress of his choice.] 



THE PAST PIASTER (to the past mistress). 

OOD day to you, sweet gossip ; greeting and fair 
good day : 
It It is an honest love and true that brings me all 
this way. 




176 THE SONG OF THE JUNE FEAST. 

THE PAST MISTRESS. 

Nay, never fancy, bachelor, I your betrothed must be, 
All for a ring of silver that you have given to me. 
Take back your ring of silver, and give or keep it still ; 
Of love for it, or love for you, I feel no want nor will. 
There was a time, but it is past for me this many a day, 
When for a smile, and but a smile, I gave my heart away : 
But time has made me wiser, and hath flouted me full sore ; 
Let smile who will, and ne'er so sweet, but I will laugh no more. 

THE PAST MASTER. 

When I was young, three ribbons at my button I did show ; 
One was green, and one was blue, and the third was white as 

snow. 
That green ribbon in honour of my gossip fair I wore, 
For true and tender was the love in my heart for her I bore. 
The white ribbon I wore in the eye of day to show, 
A token of the spotless love that was betwixt us two. 
The blue ribbon I wore to mark that at peace with her I'd be : 
And ever as I look at it my sighs fall heaviliè. 
I'm left alone, now she is flown, alack and well-a-day ! 
As the wanton little pigeon from the old cote flies away. 



THE SONG OF THE JUNE FEAST. 177 

the NEW master (to his mistress). 
The summer is new comen in, with the pleasant month of June, 
When youths and maids walk hand in hand, with happy hearts 

in tune : 
The flowers they are open in the meadow-lands to-day, 
And young folks' hearts are open too, where'er they go or stay. 
See the white bloom on the hawthorn, how purely sweet it 

smells ; 
See how little birds are pairing in the dingles and the dells. 
Then come away, my sweetheart, come walk, the woods with me, 
We will hear the wind a-rustle in the branches of the tree ; 
And the water of the streamlet the pebbles murmuring o'er, 
And the birds in the tall tree-tops that their merry music pour : 
Each making its own melody according to its kind, 
A music that will make for us glad heart and quiet mind. 



THE SONG OF THE NEW THEESHING- 

FLOOB. 

(SON LEUR-NEYEZ.) 

[The inauguration of a new threshing-floor in Brittany is a great "frolic." 
When the old floor has grown rough and unfit for service, the farmer announces a 
new threshing-floor. His neighbours assemble over-night with their carts laden with 
clay and water-barrels, taking up the best points for a gallop to the spot, when the 
first-arrived wins a knot of ribbon. The clay is rapidly unloaded, the water poured 
over it ; the horses, with be-ribboned manes and tails, are driven round and round 
to work the puddle into consistence : sometimes a table is spread in the centre of the 
new floor, a chair set on it, and the prettiest girl of the place kept a prisoner in it 
till she is set free on payment of some merry forfeit. A week after, when the clay 
has hardened sufficiently, the new floor becomes a ball-room, and long chains of 
dancers, or rounds of young girls, carrying on their heads full milk-pails or crocks 
filled with flowers, whirl merrily about it to the music of a rote or bagpipe. The 
favourite figures are those interminable interlacings which may still be seen in some 
of our Cornish festivals— notably on Furry-Day at Helston, or at Penzance on the 
Eves of St. John and St. Peter. The dance is often followed by wrestling-matches — 
always a Celtic sport, and only practised, among ourselves, on the Celtic side of the 
island.] 




ope a new threshing-floor all were gone, 
And of the party I was one ; 

To open a floor with dance and play, 
I was not one at home to stay. 



180 THE SONG OF THE NEW THRESHING-FLOOR. 

Of young lads there was plenty there, 
And plenty, I ween, of lasses fair. 

Oh, but my heart did jig away, 
Soon as I heard the music play ! 

I saw a maid in the measure move, 
She was shy as a turtle-dove : 

Bright her eyes as the drops that run 
On a branch of may in the rising sun ; 

Blue her eyes as the flax full blown, 
White her teeth as the whitest stone ; 

A laugh on her lip and a light in her ee, 
And oh, but she gave a look at me. 

I looked, but for manners awhile did stand, 
Before I made bold to ask her hand ; 

To ask her hand for a jabadaou,* 

And soon we were leading the measure true. 

* The favourite dance of Covnouaille. 



THE SONG OF THE NEW THRESHING-FLOOR. 181 

And we danced and danced, till by degrees, 
Her wee white hand I ventured to squeeze ; 

And then she smiled, oh, she smiled on me — 
Not an angel of Heaven could sweeter be : 

And I smiled back her smile again, 
And since but for her my heart is fain. 

I will go to see her to-night, 

With a velvet band and a cross so bright ; 

A band of black velvet and cross so rare, 
My fairing from St. Nicholas' fair : 

St. Nicholas,* our patron true — 

On her small white neck how brave 'twill shew. 

And I'll take thee a ring of the silver fine, 
For that pretty slender finger o' thine ; 

On her small finger a keepsake to be, 
That she may sometimes think of me. 

* The fête of St. Nicholas is emphatically the lover's festival in Brittany, and 
keepsakes and fairings bought on that day have a special virtue. 



182 THE SONG OF THE NEW THRESHING-FLOOR. 

As I came back from seeing my sweet, 
I met the old tailor in the street ; 

I met the old tailor coming along, — 
And he it was that made this song. 



THE SHEPHEBD'S CALL. 

(ANN ALIKE.) 

[Childhood has its special festival in Brittany. It is celebrated at the close of 
autumn, and is called " The Shepherd's Holiday." The scene is generally some wide 
heath, whither the young shepherds and shepherdesses are accustomed to drive their 
flocks for pasture. Hither parents bring their boys and girls, between nine and 
twelve years old, with good store of butter, milk, fruit, and cakes. After a merry 
pic-nic, some reverend senior of the party sings to the children a series of moral 
precepts— called Eentel ar Vugale (the children's lesson) : then follows the indis- 
pensable dance, and as they wind their way homewards they sing this old song. Its 
Breton name is derived from the call which the little shepherds, boy and girl, shout 
to each other from hill-side to hill-side. The boy begins, "Ali, kè ! ali, kè ! ali, 
kè !" ("a warning, come!") 

Then, naming the girl he wishes to call, he adds — 

Lè ("hear"). 

If she be indisposed for a rejoinder, she calls — 

Néann-lced-dè ("I won't come "). 

If she be socially disposed, her answer is — 

Mê ia/ iè ("I come; yes"). 

Then the boy strikes up this song, to the last stanza, which the girl sings, with 
variations.] 




184 THE SHEPHERD'S CALL. 



S I rose on Sunday morning to drive the kine to 
lea, 
I heard my sweetheart singing — by the voice I 
knew 'twas she ; 
I heard my sweetheart singing, singing gay on the hill-side, 
And I made a song to sing with her, across the valley wide. 

The first time I set eyes on Mac'haidik, my sweet May, 

Was at her first communion upon an Easter-day, 

In the parish-church of Foesnant, 'mong her mates in age and 

size : 
She was twelve years old, — my darling, — and I was twelve 

likewise. 

Like golden blossom of the broom, or wild-rose sweet and small, 
Like wild-rose in a heath-brake, shone my fair among them all : 
All the time the mass was serving I had only eyes for her, 
And the more I gazed upon her, the more love my heart did stir. 

I've a full-fruited apple-tree in my mother's orchard-ground, 
It has green turf about it, and an arbour built around : 



THE SHEPHERD'S CALL. 185 

When my sweet May, my best belov'd, deigns come to visit me, 
We will sit, I and my sweet, in the shadow of that tree ; 

I'll pull for her the apple that has the rosiest skin, 
Tie her a posy, with my flower, a marigold, therein — 
A marigold all withered, as for-pined my cheek you see, 
For not one tender kiss of love have I yet had from thee. 

She answers. 
Now hold thy peace, my sweetheart, and soon; and sing no 

mo : 
Folk will hear you through the valley, as their way to mass 

they go. 
Another time when on the heath we meet, and there's none to 

see, 
One little tender love-kiss I will give you, — or two, maybe. 



B B 






THE LEPEE. 

(AR C'HAKOUZ.) 



[The leprosy appeared in Brittany near the end of the twelfth century. The 
unhappy creatures attacked by it were cut off from fellowship with their kind, con- 
fined to certain towns and certain quarters of those towns, had their own leper 
priests, leper churches, leper graves. In later times, the leper was allowed to dwell 
outside the gates of walled cities, and to carry on the business of rope-making ; but 
he was still cut off from the dwellings, worship, society, and joys of those around him. 

There was something horribly significant in the ceremonial which severed the 
leper from his fellow -creatures. 

When the disease showed itself, a solemn procession, the priest at its head, 
visited the house : the priest exhorted the leper to resignation, stripped him of his 
clothes, giving him a black hooded cloak in exchange, sprinkled him with holy water, 
and conducted him to the church, where he listened to the death-mass kneeling, 
with corpse candles about him, and covered with a pall, as if he had been dead. He 
was then sprinkled afresh with holy water, the Libera nos Domine was sung, and he 
was led to the dwelling set apart for him, which was furnished with a bed, a press, a 
table, a chair, an earthen pot, and a lamp. There were given to him a hood and robe, 
with a red cross on the shoulder, a coverlet, a barrel, a funnel, a pair of clappers (to 
warn people from his way), a leathern girdle, and a birchen staff. 

On the threshold the priest exhorted him once more to resignation, warned 
him never to go out of his hut without his black hood and his red cross : to enter 
neither into church, house, nor tavern, mill nor bake-house : not to wash, body 
or clothes, iu spring or running stream : not to show himself at holiday, pardon, or 
public assembly : never to touch wares in market except with his staff and without 
speaking : never to answer with the wind, to walk at night in hollow ways, or to 
caress children or give them anything. Then he flung a handful of earth on hi3 feet, 



188 THE LEPER. 



and left him alone, in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If the man, thus 
doomed to death in life, had children, they were not baptised with others, but apart, 
and the water that had touched them was thrown out as polluted. When he died he 
was buried under the floor of his hut. 

The JhaJcouz, as they were called in Brittany, became extinct in the fifteenth 
century ; but the trades of rope-maker and cooper, formerly practised by them, are 
still regarded with a lingering feeling of contempt and aversion. The lepers are the 
subjects of many popular songs and ballads — turning naturally on the wretchedness 
of their lot, especially on their separation from those they love. This is the theme 
of the following dialogue between a leper and his love.] 




H, thou that mad est Earth and Heaven, 
A bitter cup to me is given ! 
Through weary night, and dreary day, 
I think of my sweet love, alway. 



My mortal sickness to my bed 
Holdeth close-bound my stricken head 
If my sweet love could come to me, 
Ah, soon consoled I should be. 

Welcome as morning-star that shows 
After a night of weary woes, 
My gentle maiden's face would be, 
Tf she could come to comfort me. 



THE LEPER. 189 

If she but touched with her sweet lip 
My drinking-cup's extremest tip ; 
Drinking where she had drunk before, 
Straightway would vanish scab and sore. 

The heart that thou didst give to me, 
Oh, my beloved, to keep for thee, 
I have not lost, nor squandered it, 
Nor to an evil use have set. 

The heart that thou didst give to me, 
Oh, my beloved, to keep for thee, 
I have it mingled up with mine : 
Which is my heart, and which is thine ? 

SHE. 

Who is it talketh to me so, 
That am as black as any crow ? 

HE. 

If you were black as mulberriè, 

For him that loves you, white you'd be. 



190 THE LEPER. 



SHE. 

Young man, it is not sooth you say : 
To you I gave no heart away : 
My maiden-love I gave you not : 
You are a leper, well I wot. 

HE. 

Like to an apple on the bough 
Is woman's heart, I do avow : 
Fair is the apple's hue and form, 
But in its heart it hides a worm. 

Like to the leaf upon the spray 
Is beauty in a maiden-May : 
The leaf it droppeth to the ground, 
So lovely looks to fade are found. 

Like the blue flower beside the stream, 
The love of a young girl I deem : 
The little flower, of sunlight fain, 
Will sometime turn and turn again. 



THE LEPER. 191 

The little flower it turns o' days, 
The young girl's love it turns always ; 
The flower is by the stream swept down, 
Forgettings traitor-memories drown. 

I am a youthful clerk, and poor, 
I am the son of Iann Kaour ; 
Three years of study I was fain, 
Now I shall ne'er to school again. 

But soon, after brief space of woe, 
From my own folk I hence shall go : 
Soon death will come, to my desire, 
And purgatory's cleansing fire. 




THE MILLER'S WIFE OP PONTARO. 

(MELINEREZ PONTARO.) 



T Bannalek is a pardon gay 

Where pretty girls are stol'n away ;- 
And my mill-wheels cry 

Diga-diga-di ; 

And my mill-wheels say 

Diga-diga-da ! 



Thither come gallants so fine and fair. 
Great horses with trappings rich and rare, 

And white-plumed beavers on waving curls, 
To win the fancies of pretty girls. 

Humpy Guillaouik* is wroth and wae, 
His pretty Fantik is won away. 

* The Breton equivalent for Willikio, 

C C 



194 the miller's wife of pontaro. 

" Little snip, look not so crazed and crost, 
Your pretty Fantik is not lost : 

" Safe at Pontaro mill is she, 
In the young Baron's companie." 

" Toe ! toe ! toe ! Miller— out and alack ! 
Give me my pretty Fantik back." 

" I ne'er saw your Fanchon, Humpy Will, 
Ne'er save once, at the Baron's mill ; 

" Once, by the bridge, all in her best, 
With a little rose upon her breast ; 

" Her coif was whiter than new-fâllen snow, 
It ne'er was gift of yours, I know ; 

" And her black velvet bodice was jimp and tight, 
Laced with a lace of silver- white. 

" A basket she bore on her arm so fair, 
Filled with fruits gold-ripe and rare ; 



THE MILLER'S WIFE OF PONTARO. 195 

" Fruits in the manor-garden grown, 

And flowers, poor snip, above them strown. 

" She looked at her face in the water clear — 
I trow 'twas no face to flout or fleer : 

" And aye she sung — 'tis true, o' my life — 
( Well is it with the miller's wife : 

" c To be a miller's wife 's my will — 
The miller's, at the young Baron's mill.' " 

" Miller, thy japes and jeers restrain, 
Give me my pretty Fantik again." 

" Though you count me five hundred crowns 
Your Fantik shall be no such clown's : 

" Your Fanchon ne'er shall be at your will, 
Here she shall bide, in the Baron's mill : 

" Your Fantik home you shall never bring, — 
Upon her finger I've put my ring. 



196 the miller's wife of pontaro. 

" In Lord Ewen's mill she shall abide — 
There 's a man for a woman's pride ! " 

The men of the mill, they were merry men, 
They stinted not singing — "but nor ben — 

Singing so loud and whistling so clear — 
" Pancakes and butter is dainty fare ; 

" Pancakes well-buttered, face and back, 

And a gowpen* o' meal out of every man's sack ; 

" A gowpen o' meal out of every man s poke, 
And pretty girls, too, that can take a joke ! " 
And my mill-wheels cry 

Diga-diga-di ; 

And my mill-wheels say 

Diga-diga-da ! 

* Handful — Scoitice. 










THE SILVER MIEEOBS. 

(MELLEZOUROU ARC'HANT.) 
[The Breton bride wears her coif decorated with little silver mirrors.] 



YTHE and listen, old and youn^ 
Lythe and list to a new song 



On Marchaid of Kerglujar, 
Fairest maiden, near or far. 

And her mother to her said, 
" None so fair as my Marchaid." 

" Little boots it to be fair, 
Since no wooer you'll let near. 

'•'When the apple's red and full, 
Needs you lose no time to pull : 



198 THE SILVER MIRRORS. 

c It will fall and waste its prime, 
If it be not pulled in time." 

" Little one, be comforted, 
In a year you shall be wed." 

"And if before the year I die, 
Sorely you will grieve and cry. 

" If dead ere the year I be, 
In a new grave bury me : 

a On my grave-stead put three posies, 
Two of laurel, one of roses. 

" When the young clerks seek the ground, 
They will deal the posies round : 

" To each other they will say, 
' Maiden-corpse lies here in clay ; 

" ' Dead for longing once to wear 
The silver mirrors in her hair — 



THE SILVER MIRRORS. 199 

" ' Wayside tomb * for me were well, 
Out of sound of passing bell : 

" ' Bell for me will never ring, 
Priest o'er me will never sing.' " 

* A threat of suicide. 



THE CEOSS BY THE WAY. 

(KEOAZ ANN HENT.) 




, WEET in the green-wood a birdie sings, 
f^ Golden-yellow its two bright wings, 
Red its heartikin, blue its crest : 
Oh, but it sings with the sweetest breast ! 



Early, early it lighted down 
On the edge of my ingle-stone, 
As I prayed my morning prayer, — 
" Tell me thy errand, birdie fair." 



Then sung it as many sweet things to me 
As there are roses on the rose-tree : 
" Take a sweetheart, lad, an you may, 
To gladden your heart both night and day. 



202 THE CROSS BY THE WAY. 

Past the cross by the way as I went, 
Monday, I saw her, fair as a saint : 
Sunday, I will go to mass, 
There on the green I'll see her pass. 

Water poured in a beaker clear, 
Dimmer shows than the eyes of my dear 
Pearls themselves are not more bright 
Than her little teeth, pure and white. 

Then her hands and her cheek of snow, 
Whiter than milk in a black pail, show. 
Yes, if you could my sweetheart see, 
She would charm the heart from thee. 

Had I as many crowns at my beck, 
As hath the Marquis of Poncalec ; 
Had I a gold-mine at my door, — 
Wanting my sweetheart, I were poor. 

If on my door-sill up should come 
Golden flowers for furze and broom, 



THE CKOSS BY THE WAY. 203 

Till my court were with gold piled high, 
Little I'd reck, but she were by. 

Doves must have their close warm nest, 
Corpses must have the tomb for rest ; 
Souls to Paradise must depart, — 
And I, my love, must to thy heart. 

Every Monday at dawn of day 
I'll on my knees to the cross by the way ; 
At the new cross by the way I'll bend, 
In thy honour, my gentle friend ! 







THE SWALLOWS/ 

(AR GWEKNILIED.) 

^0 our village a pathway small 
Leadeth from the manor-hall ; 

A pathway whiter than 'tis wide, 
And a May-bush grows beside : 

Sweet thereon the May-flowers smell — 
Our lord's young son, he loves them well. 

I'd be a May-flower, 'an I might, 

For him to cull with his hand so white ; 

To cull with that small hand of his, 
That whiter than the May-flower is. 

Composed by the same sisters who wrote "The Flowers of May." 



206 THE SWALLOWS. 

I would a May-flower I might be, 
That on his heart he might set me. 

Still from the hall away he goes 

When winter crowns the house with snows ; 

Goes to the country of the Gaul,* 
As doth the swallow, at winter-fall. 

When the young year wakes germ and grain, 
With the young year he comes again ; 

When the blue corn-flower 's in the wheat, 
And barley-ears wave green and sweet ; 

When sings the lark above the lea, 
And finch and linnet on the tree ; — 

Comes back to us a welcome guest, 
At holiday and patrons' feast. 

* " Bro-chall," France, as usual in the Breton. 



THE SWALLOWS. 207 

Oh, would that every month were May, 
And every hour a holiday : 

Would I could see about the sky 
All the year round the swallows fly ; 

Could see them still, from spring to spring, 
Abound our chimney on the wing ! 




THE POOB CLEBK.* 

(AR C'HLOAREK PAOTJR.) 

Y wooden shoes I've lost them, my naked feet I've 
torn, 
A-following my sweeting through field and brake 
of thorn : 
The rain may beat, and fall the sleet, and ice chill to the bone, 
But they're no stay to hold away the lover from his own. 

My sweeting is no older than I that love her so : 

She's scarce seventeen, her face is fair, her cheeks like roses 

glow. 
In her eyes there is a fire, sweetest speech her lips doth part ; 
Her love it is a prison where I've locked up my heart. 

* An account will be found in the Introduction of the Semiarists of Tréguier, 
and of the circumstances under which such idylls as this are written. 






210 THE POOR CLERK. 

Oh, to what shall I liken her, that a wrong it shall not be ? 
To the pretty little white rose, that is called Rose-Marie ? 
The pearl of girls ; the lily when among the flowers it grows, 
The lily newly opened, among flowers about to close. 

When I came to thee a-wooing, my sweet, my gentle May, 

I was as is the nightingale upon the hawthorn spray : 

When he would sleep the thorns they keep a pricking in his 

breast, 
That he flies up perforce and sings upon the tree's tall crest. 

I am as is the nightingale, or as a soul must be 

That in the purgatory fires lies longing to be free, 

Waiting the blessed time when I into your house shall come, 

All with the marriage-messenger,* bearing his branch of broom. 

Ah, me ! my stars are froward : 'gainst nature is my state ; 
Since in this world I came I've dreed a dark and dismal fate : 
I have nor living kin nor friends, mother nor father dear, 
There is no Christian on earth to wish me happy here. 

* The bazvalan. See the Songs of Marriage. 









THE POOR CLERK. 211 

There lives no one hath had to hear so much of grief and 

shame 
For your sweet sake as I have, since in this world I came ; 
And therefore on my bended knees, in God's dear name I sue, 
Have pity on your own poor clerk, that loveth only y r ou ! 



THE SONG OF THE SOULS IN PAIN. 

(KANÂOUEN ANN ANAON.) 

[The "black month" (November), says M. de la Villemarque, is the month of 
the dead. On All Saints' Eve (the Scotch Halloween) crowds flock to the grave-yards 
to pray by the family graves, to fill with holy water the little hollows left for this 
pious purpose in the Breton grave-stones, or, in some places, to offer libations of milk. 
All night masses for the dead are said, and the bells toll : in some places, after 
vespers the parish priest goes round in procession by torch -light to bless the tombs. 
In every house the cloth and the remains of the supper are left on the table, that the 
souls of the dead may take their seats about the board : the fire, too, is left burning 
on the hearth, that the dead may warm their thin hands at the embers, as they did 
in life. When the dead-mass has been said, the death-bell tolled, the supper eaten, 
and the household are a-bed, weird wailirjgs are heard outside the door, blent with 
the sighing of the wind. They are the songs of the souls, who borrow the voice of 
the parish poor to ask the prayers of the living. This is their song. ] 



Y Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 

We greet this house, its head and host, 
Greeting and health to great and small — 
And bid you straight to praying fall. 



When Death knocks with his hand so thin, 
At midnight, asking to come in, 




214 THE SONG OF THE SOULS IN PAIN. 

No heart but with a quake doth say, 
Who is it Death would take away ? 

But you, be not amazed, therefor, 
If we the Dead stand at the door ; 
Tis Jesus bade us hither creep 
To waken you, if chance you sleep. 

To wake you in this house that bide, 
To wake you, old and young beside, 
If ruth, alack, live under sky, 
For succour in God's name we cry ! 

Brothers and friends and kinsmen all, 
In God's name hear us when we call ; 
In God's name pray for us, pray sore, 
Our children, ah, they pray no more ! 

They that we fed upon the breast, 
Long since to think of us have ceast : 
They that we held in our heart's core, 
Hold us in loving thought no more ! 



THE SONG OF THE SOULS IX PAIX. 215 

My son, my daughter, daintily, 
On warm soft feather beds ye lie, 
Whilst I your mother, I your sire, 
Scorch in the purgatory fire. 

All soft and still and warm you lie, 
The poor souls toss in agony : 
You draw your breaths in quiet sleep, 
Poor souls in pain their watching keep. 

A white shroud and five planks for bed, 
A sack of straw beneath the head, 
And over it five feet of clay, 
Are all Earth's goods we take away. 

We lie in fire and anguish-sweat, — 
Fire over head, fire under feet, 
Fire all above, fire all below — 
Pray for the souls that writhe in woe ! 

Aforetime when on earth we moved, 
Parents we had and friends that loved . 



216 THE SONG OF THE SOULS IN PAIN. 

But now that we are dead and gone, 
Parents and lovers we have none. 

Succour, in God's name, you that may : 
Unto the blessed Virgin pray, 
A drop of her dear milk to shed, 
One drop, on poor souls sore bestead. 

Up from your beds, and speediliè, 
And throw yourselves on bended knee, 
Save those whom ailments sore make lame, 
Or Death, already, calls by name ! 



Hearing this lamentable cry, all rise from their beds, fall on their knees, and 
pray God for the departed, not forgetting their representatives— the poor at the door. 

The lugubrious troop passes on its way, through the bare woods, over the waste 
heaths, to the sound of the death-bells, and the wailing of the wind among the dead 
leaves, which are — says the Breton proverb —less thick on the ground in the black 
month, than the souls of the dead are in the air this night. 



APPENDIX. 



THE OEIGINAL BEETON AIES OF SOME OF THE PEECEDING 
BALLADS AND SONGS HAEMONIZED. 




APPENDIX. 

kglg^HE Breton melodies are wild and expressive, partaking 
? somewhat of the character of the Welsh national airs, 
though ruder and less complete. Some of them (as noted 
by M. de la Villemarque) are so irregular, both in rhythm and 
diatonic progression, that it is difficult to harmonize them without 
alteration. Among the most unmanageable are " The Crusader's 
Wife," " The Falcon," and " The Nightingale," the music of which 
I have in consequence omitted. " Bran " and " Rohan " have no 
airs noted by M. de la Villemarque. " Gwenc'hlan " and " Jauïoz " 
are beautifully harmonized in M. de la Yillemarque's book, and 
these I have adopted as they stand. I have retained the Breton 
words, as, owing to a peculiar deviation in the accentuation of the 
words as sung from that of the words as spoken (a peculiarity still 
retained in the modern French), it is difficult to accommodate to 
the airs English words, even when metrically equivalent to the 
Breton. This will explain some few alterations in the English 
words as printed in the music from the versions in the earlier part 
of the volume. 

LAURA W. TAYLOR. 



APPENDIX. 



221 



GWIN AR CHALLAOUED. 



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(Wine of the Gauls.) 



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Gwell-eo g win gwenn bar ISTa m ou - ar ; Gwell-eo gwin gwenn bar. 




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tan ! dir ! oh ! dir ! Tan ! tan ! dir ! ha tan ! Tann ! tann ! 



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oak ! earth, and waves ! Fire, earth, waves and oak ! 
ha tonn ! tonn ! tann ! Tir ha tir ha tann. 



222 



APPENDIX. 



Andantino. 



AOTROU NANN. 
(The Lord Nann.) 



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223 



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DIOUGAN GWENCHLAN. 

(The Prediction of Gwenchlan.) 

Andantino espressivo. 



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224 



APPENDIX. 




Maestoso. 



BALE ARZUR. 

(The March of Arthur.) 



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22d 



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(Alan the Fox.) 




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226 



APPENDIX. 



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Andante. 



LIYADEN GERIZ. 

(The Drowning of Kaer-is.) 




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APPENDIX. 



22: 



Andante. 



DROUK - KINNIG NEUMENOIOU. 
(The Evil Tribute of Nomenoe.) 



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228 



APPENDIX. 




Maestoso. 



BOSEN ELLIANT. 

(The Plague of Elliant.) 



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'Twixt Faou - et and Llangolan, There lives a bard a holyman,There 
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lives a bard a holy man, His name is Fa-ther Ea-si - an. 
Barz san-tel a zoka-vet; Hag heu tad Ka - si-anhan-vet. 






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DISTRO EUZ A VRO-ZAOZ. 

, , ,. (Return from Saxon Land.) 



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ha par - rez Plou - a 



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APPENDIX. 



229 




vJ - re, A me - nye of bold gentlemen are gathered m ar- 

re, Ez euz tad-jen-til iaou-aug o se - vel cunnar 




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E - vit monet d'ar-bre zel, din dan mab ann du - 



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much folk to them has gone. 
euz a beb torn a Vreiz. 




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230 



APPENDIX. 



Poco allegretto. 



AR BREUR MAGER. 

(The Foster Brother.) * 



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Bra -oan merc'hdi - jen - til ... . 



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air, though I have preserved the metre of the original. T. T. 



APPENDIX. 



231 



BARON JAOUIOZ. 



Andante espressivo. 



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As I 
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was washing, the stream hard by, . . . 
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Sudden I heard the death-bird's cry. "Dost know, my child, the 
oann er ster gand va dil - lad ; Me - gle - ve'un evn glod 

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ry goes, Thou'rt sold to the Lord of Jauï - - oz?" 
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232 



APPENDIX. 



I 



STOÜRM ANN TREGONT. 
(The Battle of the Thirty.) 

u. Allegro vivace. 



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March with his winds so fierce and frore, Hammers and bat - ters at the 
Ax miz meurs, gand he vor - zo - liou, A - zeu da skei war hon-no ■ 



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on, Forests are bratthng,earthvvardsblown,Hailstormsarerattlingtheroofsup-on. 
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APPENDIX. 



233 



Allegro. 




FEST AR MIZ EVEN. 
(The June Feast.) 

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"Good day to you sweet gos - sip, Greeting and fair good day, Good 
De-niadd'hoc'hu, ko-me-rez de -madd'hoc'h a la rann,De 

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day to you sweet gos - sip, 
mad'd'hoc'h-hu ko-me-rez, 



Greet-ing and fair good day;" 
de - mad d'hoc'h a la rami : 



'Nay 
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ne - ver fan - cy, bachelor, 
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I your betroth'dmustbe, 
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234 



APPENDIX. 



fc: 



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for a ring of sil 
ge menu ar ga - ran 



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verinatyou 
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havegiv'n to me." 
deu - et a - man. 




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i4 llegretto. 



ANN ALIKE. 
(The Shepheed's Call.) 



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As I rose on Sun - day morn - ing to . . . drive the 
Di - sul vin - tin ha - pa za - viz e - vit kas ma 



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kine to lea, There . I heard my sweet-heart sing - ing, 
zaout er mez, E - kle-vig - va-douz o ka - na, 



APPENDIX. 



235 



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tJ by the voice 



I knew 



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236 



APPENDIX. 



) 



Andante. 



AR C'HAKOUZ. 
(The Leper.) 



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Oh thou that mad'st 
O krou er aim env 



both earth and heav'n, 
hag ann dou - ar, 



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to me that's giv'n, Thro'hea-vy night and 
Ion gant glach - ar, O kou-nan en n noz hag 



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wea - ry day I think of my sweet love al - way. 
enn de D'amdou-sik koant, d'am c'ha- ran - te. 




APPENDIX. 



237 



Animata. 



MELINEREZ PONTARO. 

(The Miller's Wife of Pontaro.) 



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pret - ty girls are stol'u a - way, And my mill-wheels cry, 
ia merc'hed koant gad al laer. Ha ma mel a drei, 



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Di-ga di-ga - di : And my mill-wheels say, 
Di-ga di-ga- di: Ha ma mel a ia, 



Di-ga, di-ga - da. 
Di-ga, di-ga - da. 



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238 



APPENDIX. 



P 



Triste. 



MELLEZOUROU ARC'HANT. 
(The Silver Mirrors.) 



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Hark while I sing, old folks and young, harken ! Hark while I 
Chi - leu - et holl, ho c'hi -leu - et ; o - ge! Chi - leu - et 




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sing, old folks and young, Hark-en I pray, to my new 



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song, Ti-ra la la ti-ra la la Ti-ra la la ti ra la la. 
uet Ti-ra la la ti-ra la la Ti-ra la la ti-ra la la. 



APPENDIX. 



239 



Allegro. 



KROAZ ANN HENT. 
(The Cross by the Way.) 



m 



Sweet in the woods a bir - die 
Ein - nig a gan er c'hoad hu 



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sings, 
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BKADBURY AND KVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 



